


Lonely People

by JadedPandaGirl



Series: Witchy Bussiness [13]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Action, Death (theme), Gen, Ghosts, Hauntings, Horror, I flattened canon with a rolling pin and used cookie cutters to make what I wanted, Necromancy, Occult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 01:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12900921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadedPandaGirl/pseuds/JadedPandaGirl
Summary: In the wake of the Savior incident, Fortuna is reeling. Nero is restless, uncertain of his place in it and of his sentiments about the place and the ordeal that changed it. And then... the dead start to roam the streets and invade the lives of the survivors. When they finally come for him, Nero has no other option but to seek out Dante, just to get dumped at the door of an 'expert spook chaser'. He must now re-evaluate his stance on some old enemies of the Order and his own feelings about the Savior incident and conclude some unfinished business.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank CB for his help with editing and my lovely tumblr followers for their support. All my love to you.

Fortuna had been a bustling city, once.

Cars had once trundled down the ancient cobbles of old town, groaning in relief when they met newer tarmacked surfaces, laid as the castle city began to grow. People crowded the streets during any of the great festivals and whenever shops availed their goods. The docks were filled with the heady bustle of fishermen and the groaning of wood as boats bobbed on the lapping waves. The playful sounds of children filled the playgrounds and residential areas, all under the cathedral's protective shadow.

But no more.

Now Fortuna was little more than a pale, sickly shadow of its former self. The Savior's rise and fall had torn the city apart like lightning sundering trees. From Port Caerula all the way to Lamina Peak, it was in ruin, laying in the sun much like a flayed rib cage, rent open and heart exposed by the carrion power-mongers that had once been its leaders.

All those lives for a dream as fleeting as castles built on sand.

Whenever he thought about it, Nero felt sick to his stomach. He was over anger now, past his grief, stuck somewhere between disgust and disdain. Sometimes he questioned why he stayed; in the beginning he told himself it was because this place was his home. But that was quickly becoming a lie he told himself; there was no more hiding his arm. People noticed. He found himself being given a wide berth if and when he encountered people on the street. Other times he told himself that there was a lot left to do and not enough people to do it. Demons still roamed the island – stragglers, really, there was nothing intimidating enough to warrant concern. Even what was left of the original Holy Knights would be more than capable of dealing with them. Soon enough, even those few leftovers would be mopped up.

Now Nero questioned whether it was really worth staying and doing anything for this mess.

People were leaving, unwilling to try and rebuild their lives on an island they believed to be cursed by any number of deities, the most pious being the most resistant to the temptation of fleeing. They wanted to rebuild and reform – the Order was all but obliterated, all that was left were a few lowly priests and officers and even they couldn’t agree what to do next. Some wanted to revive the Order under new leaders, with new creeds, and even ideals. Others, disgusted with what their ruler had descended to, sought to let the Order be consumed by history, allowed to die in the shame that it had come to wear. None of those dregs wanted anything to do with him.

Nero hated that stupid squabbling. None of them cared about what really mattered: the people who were left; the lost, the grieving, the confused, the uncertain. A lot of people saw hope in Kyrie and looked to her for some guidance, some kind words – anything to cling on, really. She tried so hard, being put on the spot like that. Nero sometimes got disgusted with them too. Not just because they were like mindless sheep, bleating for a shepherd – _any_ shepherd, even one unable to really help them out of their plight, they were… well, ungrateful. Kyrie did the best she could for them but he knew it when he watched them; they were wary of _him._ And of Kyrie because she _wasn’t_.

How long could they afford to go on previously accumulated grace? When would the people snap?

If Kyrie ever even said anything about leaving, they’d be off that island that same hour. He often felt the temptation to persuade her into leaving but the way she looked over the people, the city… she was still tied to this place. 

He worried deeply about her, They hadn't talked much about what happened, about what they lost, unable – or unwilling to find the time as they buried themselves in what needed to be done, those who needed looking after.

And just when he thought that the remains of the city were pulling themselves back into a semblance of normalcy… it started.

It was little things at first. Colder nights. Frost on the prows of fishing ships in the middle of summer and the unnatural, haunting howl carried by the wind.

Then it started to seep into the people, that odd feeling of someone passing you by when there was nobody there, the eerie sensation of being under observation when you were all alone. People complaining of awful dreams, of lost loved ones, of sleepless nights rendered immobile in bed when _something_ hung over them like a disease. Something they always described as _familiar_ , and when they did the word took on a sinister meaning. They would avoid wandering the streets after midnight because there was something _there_ that they could never see but could feel the cold breath on their necks and the clammy touch on their hands.

Nero almost wished there were more demons to kill. Demons were easy; you found them, maybe made a quip or two, and then you killed them. That's all there was to it, nothing more, nothing less. But this, this sort of mysterious, 'spooky shit’ kind of thing, it didn't sit well with him. When the Order was still functional this kind of thing was the job of the Inquisitor squads – Nero and other younger Holy Knights would sometimes call them ‘squint squads’ behind their backs. But now he found himself regretting the snobbery, the divide between those who were pointed towards what required the sword, and those that were required to think.

For now, all he knew was that there was something wrong in Fortuna, and, that he was struggling to make heads or tails of it. Part of him wanted to dismiss it as the effects of a wide-scale disaster on an isolated population… but ever since he had awakened to this power budding in him, he’d learned to listen to those niggles in the back of his head, the whispers from his arm.

His frustration was mounting.

That’s when he started having the dreams himself. It took him a while to admit that they were weird because his dreams had already taken a turn to the bizarre since his arm changed, almost as if the change brought with it an influence that seeped into his nightscapes. He’d stopped waking up in the middle of the night to the whispers of his arm long before the whole mess with the Savior even started.

When his dreams began to echo with the familiar footsteps of people who weren’t there anymore, he was curious. When they filled with shadows he knew but could no longer be counted among the living, he started to wonder. When the whispers of his arm were crowded out by the murmur of the lost, he began to think that maybe there was something really wrong.

But it took him realizing that the howling of the wind in his dreams started to sound an awful lot like Credo to _really_ start to worry.

He tried to tell himself that it was just his mind playing tricks; that he was waking up in the middle of the night out of habit, not because he was _scared_. The dead don’t haunt dreams, he told himself, the dead don’t start to wail at you in your dreams in a way that sounds frighteningly like pain and sorrow and anger. The dead are _dead_.

They don’t come back.

So the night that Nero woke up by throwing himself off the bed in a tangle of sheets, panting harder than a marathon-runner, clenching his teeth to keep himself from blurting out a scream, he knew that this couldn’t go on any longer. He’d torn himself out of a deep sleep just as Credo had appeared to him – first as a vague form that grew in cohesion as he came closer and closer. Nero had been frozen in his dream as Credo, ash-gray with hollow eyes and an abyss of eternal blackness where his mouth had once been. The horrible specter all but pinned him to the floor, slowly strangling him while screaming in agony the entire time, until their faces were so close that Nero could see the way Credo’s skin seemed to be translucent and at the same time so much like rotting paper.

By the time Nero had pulled himself off the floor and Kyrie had rolled over and switched on the light, he had regained control of his breathing but apparently, not of the kind of startled, wild-eyed gaze, fueled by a truly lucid nightmare.

Nero instantly prepared a carefully-crafted white lie, some bullshit about wanting to get up for a leak and tripping on the sheets, just some comforting, mundane nonsense to keep her from worrying—

“Have you been having the dreams too, Nero?”

His shoulders sagged. Kyrie now stood on the other side of the bed in her plain night dress, her hair drawn into a plait, yet mussed and unkempt from the tormented sleep. Between them the bed had become like a war zone. She looked at him with a frown of mixed concern and exhaustion – he hadn’t noticed that exhaustion in her until now. There were dark circles under her eyes. How had that escaped him?

“You… too?” he croaked.

She nodded and stared at the bed. “They started a few weeks ago,” she said quietly and then wrapped her arms around herself awkwardly. “I thought it was just… bad dreams that would come once or twice but lately they’re become a nightly event. But I think yours are worse.”

She flicked her gaze up and fixed it on his neck, her eyes going wide and her face blanching. “Nero, your neck—“

Nero frowned and turned to the stare at the mirror over the dressing table at the opposite end of the room. His eyes widened. There was a rapidly fading bruise around his neck; four fingers and a thumb. Even as he watched, it faded away slowly.

“It’s… it’s Credo, isn’t it?” Kyrie said as her voice cracked.

Nero looked around to her again quickly, only able to watch her blinking rapidly as her eyes moistened with restrained tears. It tore at him to see her, setting off every protective instinct within him. Dodging around the bed to reach out to her, as terror gripped at his heart, would she take his hand? Would she accept him? Or would she push him away? The inner turmoil made him ill, the uncertainty cutting a hole inside. All vanished as she walked into his embrace without hesitation, allowing himself to finally breathe the breath he was unaware he held.

“You’ve seen him?” Nero blurted, gathering her into his arms.

“Yes,” she quavered.

She rested her forehead on his chest and he mechanically hugged her. Kyrie hadn’t spoken about Credo since finding out he had died, and how. She wept for a day and since then, nothing. Nero sometimes felt guilty for not pressing her to talk to him. But he always ran up against his guilt about Credo. The few times he managed to get anything out of her, Kyrie just said that she couldn’t dwell on it forever. But it had always sounded so forced when she said it and it cut him up inside. It sounded like those reserves of fortitude were starting to run out.

“Sometimes when I sleep deeply enough I can even hear him,” she said. “And not just him. Nero, it’s like others have said. They’re still here. They can’t rest. They can’t… move on to wherever it is they go. They’re left here and they don’t like it. They want to leave but they can’t.”

Nero rubbed her back soothingly. “They?” he asked and in the same breath he realized that he dreaded the answer.

Kyrie pushed back at stared him in the eye. “The dead!”

“Kyrie—“

“Nero, we’ve pretended long enough. That it’s not happening. But you just all but woke up screaming and there was a bruise of a hand on your neck,” Kyrie protested, still on the verge of tears. “You think I haven’t heard you mutter in your sleep? You think I don’t know how you growl and how your arm has an angry light to it?”

Nero reluctantly let her go, looking at the floor in shame as his fingers unthinkingly interlocked behind his head. It was stupid to try and pretend that it was all in their heads, when it was staring them in the face like this. They hadn’t confronted any of this.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t intend to keep things from you. I didn’t… think this was real. I’m still not sure.”

“I used to think the same about a lot of things,” Kyrie confessed and sat on the bed, staring at her fingers. “But then all of… that happened. With the Order and Sanctus and… and Credo. It happened. It _really_ happened. And now… this is too.”

Nero felt his back gently thump against the wall across from her and he slouched. The same kinds of thoughts were running around his head too.

“Nero, I don’t think we should’ve been so confident that we could just pretend it didn’t change us, even if it seemed like the storm was over,” Kyrie continued. “Or that it wouldn’t… leave something behind.”

Nero frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t… really put my finger on it,” she confessed. “But I feel as though… there’s a cloud hanging over the city. It’s almost as it was when demons roamed the streets. But now…”

“Now there’s nothing there to see and yet there _is,_ ” Nero concluded. “That sort of feeling?”

“Yes,” Kyrie said breathlessly. “Nero, do you think… we could go to the graveyard at the castle? I know you dislike going there but—“

Nero gulped as he began to stare hard at the carpet, letting her words sink in before finally braving to look back. “You want to visit the grave?”

She nodded. “I wanted to… I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what is happening. If he’s… somehow restless, perhaps praying and a candle…”

Nero smiled wryly at her. “You know I’m no good at religious stuff,” he said faintly. “Anyway… I doubt he wants _my_ prayers.”

He suppressed a shiver at the memory of Credo’s dead, furious face, so close to his face that he could almost feel him. If Credo should be furious at anyone, it would be him.

Kyrie shook her head. “Don’t say that. Credo really respected you even though you two didn’t always see eye to eye.”

Nero's nose wrinkled as he glanced away, He couldn't quite argue that; he had deeply respected Credo, as a friend, as a fellow Holy Knight, as a master of the sword and his teacher. But they had always butted heads over almost everything. Nero always irritated Credo with his insistence to do things his way. Credo had always rubbed Nero the wrong way since ascending to Supreme General, with his stickler attitude. And their last ever clash…

Nero didn’t like to contemplate it. He had been so, _so_ disappointed to see what Credo had allowed himself to become. Credo wasn’t blind to it but he had deemed necessary – he was always like that, duty before everything even when duty seemed so _stupid_. It was all Sanctus’ fault, twisting the most honorable and dignified man in Fortuna into just another demon puppet. He had them all fooled for _so_ long. And Credo paid the price when he decided enough was enough. Nero may not have been the one to kill Credo, but he just as well might have.

“I know. If you feel so strongly about it, we should go,” Nero said and knelt down in front of her. Gently embracing her hands in his, he kissed her knuckles softly.

And so they had gone. Nero had been apprehensive about it, but part of him wanted to. It was the least he owed to his old friend.

The castle of Fortuna might’ve been spared the kind of destruction that erased the Order HQ and the destruction of half the city when the Savior fell. It had still been pretty well battered by the passing of the Savior, not to mention the onslaught of demons that swarmed the island and especially the ones that poured out of Agnus’ damned laboratory. And to be fair, Nero had added quite a bit of damage of his own as he passed through.

He hadn’t been back since then. He didn’t like the place, knowing what it had hidden. The last time he’d been here was out of duty. To Credo. 

The Soldier’s Graveyard was traditionally where great heroes of the Order were laid to rest. Nero and Kyrie couldn’t think of a better place to make a memorial for Credo. Having no body to bury had been hard on Kyrie. The brave face that she had worn on the day left Nero feeling… well, defeated. He knew that underneath her restrained exterior, she was trying to avoid breaking down. She had cried a lot once the reality of it all had finally settled in. They interred his prized personal sword instead, the closest thing they had to a real memento of him.

Neither of them had been back since then, busy with trying to pull their lives together; busy trying to put it all behind them and move on. The majority of the people left had shared their sentiments. He didn’t think anyone would really come here.

Nero didn’t like the look of the castle as it loomed over them, even against the dull blue autumn sky. It was cloudy and dreary and he longed for more light. He had insisted on coming early, not relishing the idea of having Kyrie wandering around the place at night, even with him being there.

“Nero? Are you alright?” Kyrie asked him.

It snapped him out of his reverie as they stood at the edge of the bridge that led to the gates.

“Yeah,” he lied.

She frowned at him but said nothing, instead taking his hand, his Devil Bringer hand, in hers before he mechanically allowed her to start him down the path across the bridge. Sooner than they could reach the gates they stopped, together, neither trying to speak, but they could both see it.

The air burst into static mere paces ahead of them, flickering and shimmering as it seemed to shift, leaving them both expecting an eruption of demons, pouring forth from some twisted tear in reality. But none came, only a constant crackle of static in the air in front of them. Kyrie’s hand tightened around his suddenly as he heard her sharp intake of breath. Without realizing, Nero took a step backwards, his eyes fixed on the spot before him.

They both took another step backwards and then without saying a word, they turned around and walked hurriedly back along the bridge, wanting nothing more but to put as much distance between them and the castle as they could. Nero wanted to glance back to make sure they weren’t followed but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do so.

They had both seen it, standing in the static, wreathed and covered in ashes, with the eternal gaze of eyeless sockets and the mouth frozen open in a silent scream opened to an endless darkness, head twitching unnaturally and gaze fixed on them.

It was Credo, the very same as their nightmares.

As much as Nero tried to explain it away, all his explanations fell before the truth. As much as he tried to tell himself that dammit, whatever this was he would fight it and protect them… he knew in his gut that he couldn’t. Because how do you kill something that’s very clearly _already_ _dead?_

Kyrie said nothing. What could she say? Or he, for that matter, what could either of them say? She just shrank against him until they returned to the safety of their home – but how safe was it really, when their dreams were so haunted? She had sat by the window, eyes wide and trying in vain to deny what she had seen.

It was the sight of Kyrie looking so scared that swayed his final decision. As much as he hated it, as irritating as it would be, he would have to turn to someone with greater experience.

He would _have_ to go see Dante.


	2. Chapter 2

Finding Dante’s place was simultaneously simpler, and harder than he thought it would be. When they had last met, that Amaro business had changed Nero’s view of Dante and what he thought he knew about the guy. At the end of it, Dante had deigned to give him a scrap of paper with an address and a number.

But actually finding the stupid slum and alley where this office claimed to be turned out to be something of a headache. The city, Capulet, was big and seemed to have been laid out by an absolute madman. Streets meandered along higgledy-piggledy and made no sense. Buildings were just crammed together and streets were not always named. Whatever part of the city seemed like a normal, modern city was limited as he ventured into the slums and unsavory neighborhoods. The buildings loomed tall and dingy with kitschy neon signs for pubs, strip clubs and other seedy establishments that put him off and yet appealed to a kind of morbid curiosity he didn’t even realize he had.

After the third blind alley he checked, Nero was dangerously close to just punching a building down. At long last though, he found it – frankly he just about stumbled onto it by accident. Dante hadn’t bothered to tell him how his business was called but when Nero saw the reddish sign reading ‘Devil May Cry’, he knew in his gut that this was it. It looked dingier and more run down than Nero expected from a guy with Dante’s ego. And it also looked so plain and utterly wide open – but then again, Nero supposed that Dante liked to leave himself wide open and invite trouble.

Still, having an office to run a demon hunting business out of… there was something attractive to that. Perhaps he’d think it over when— _if_ all this mess ended well.

He strode up to the double doors, pulling off the stupid glove he’d been using to conceal his arm and rolled back his sleeve to give the damn thing room to breathe. Immediately his arm’s glow increased slightly, as though reacting to a nearby presence of demonic power. Not knowing what really to expect, Nero hesitated for a moment, then pushed open one of the two doors. It opened surprisingly easily with a soft whine. Nero stepped through reluctantly.

Immediately he wrinkled his nose. The air inside smelled a bit stale despite the pathetic, slow turn of a ceiling fan. A worn tile floor stretched ahead of him, stained in places with god knows what and only a couple of carpets under a pool table and coffee table did anything to disguise its age. Near the pool table there was a couch in faded red leather, which once upon a time must’ve been quite a find, now looking very sorry for itself. All the furniture was old and Nero wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d all been yard-sale buys or dumpster finds. The walls were bare plaster, with a few ancient-looking posters, an old dartboard and on the back, a couple of weapons racks with an assortment of mundane-looking firearms and swords. There was even the skull of a demon pinned to the wall by a wicked-looking blade.

The only furniture that seemed to be in better condition was an office desk, a large oaken beast sitting towards the back, almost against the back wall and a large ornate chair where the demon hunter in red presently lounged, legs propped on the desk and a magazine lying open on his face. He seemed to be asleep.

Nero scowled. This wasn’t quite how he pictured to meet Dante again. He let the door slam shut in his wake as he entered and stomped all the way up to the elevated wooden floor where the desk stood. Dante did not stir.

“Hey! Old man. C’mon, wake the fuck up,” Nero snapped and unceremoniously thumped the desk with his foot.

A dejected sigh emanated from Dante as the crimson clad hunter slowly dragged the magazine down his face, yet making no other move to ruin his comfort. He cast a now revealed eye to the boy as his features betrayed a smarmy smile.

“Well, well! If it ain’t the Fortuna kid,” he said. “Tired of chasing your own tail at last or is this purely a social call?”

“Shut up,” Nero blurted, feeling his hackles rising.

They hadn’t been in each other’s presence for five minutes and already the old fart was taunting him!

Sitting up while finally removing the magazine from his face entirely, he cast it onto the desk while his weight shifted deeper into his seat, the chair groaning as it strained under the movement before finally settling once more as he came to rest.

“So,” Dante said flatly. “I don’t see you growing a tail or something, so your arm’s fine… and I haven’t heard of Fortuna blowing up so you’re not on the run. You look good and pissed so your girl didn’t dump ya. What _does_ bring you to my business, kid? Don’t tell me you need a part-time job.”

Nero forced himself to bite back a long list of expletives and gestures he could’ve directed at him, as well as the happy alternative of using the Devil Bringer to punch him through the wall. He’d just have to live with the fact that Dante was going to give him shit. He could get back at him when he had some answers.

“What, you’re keeping tabs on me now?” he bristled.

Dante shrugged, still smiling. “Shouldn’t someone?”

“Fuck off,” Nero muttered. “I’m here because of this,” he said and gestured to the office around him. “You hunt demons for a living. You know shit.”

Dante snickered quietly but Nero could tell he had his attention. “I should hope so, been doing it long enough. Is that it, you interested in opening a branch?”

Nero almost walked out then and there. Was Dante reading his goddamn mind, now?! “Maybe. Right now I have other fish to fry. You deal with demons only or what?”

Nero cursed himself quietly. Why couldn’t he just spit it out?! Because it sounded stupid, that’s why. He had absolutely no evidence that what was happening in Fortuna was _dangerous_. So people moaned about stuff and he had had a bad dream about the creepy-ass ghost of his dead mentor. But then again… the bruise had been real. Kyrie’s fears had been real.

And what he’d seen at the castle had been real.

Dante laughed. “If you’re asking whether I take body-dumping jobs, the answer’s no. I don’t do seedy stuff and I don’t do—“

Finally Nero’s jaw unclamped. “Do you deal with—with ghosts?”

It was as if he’d said the magic word. Dante’s gaze flicked on him properly, the ironic twitch of the eyebrow smoothed and his smile shrank. “Been spookin’ yourself, kid?”

“No,” Nero snapped. “I think…there’s somethin’ going on in Fortuna. Like it’s…haunted. What the hell do you do with…ghosts?”

He blurted out the word with disbelief. Dante said nothing, just stared at him, as if he expected more. He actually put his legs down from the desk and rested his elbow against it. Nero was reluctant to tell him just how much he’d seen. He certainly wasn’t gonna tell him about the dreams.

And yet, Dante didn’t taunt him as he’d feared.

“That bad?” he asked quietly.

Nero was taken aback by his sudden sobriety. “It feels like the entire city’s lost it.” Frustration took him and he started to pace and his speech sped up. “I… saw Credo. I think. I don’t know _what_ I saw! He— _It_ looked like him. But it was all…wrong! The eyes were gone and he just… _It_ was…angry.”

Dante watched and listened and amazingly, said nothing. But then he stood up, stretched his arms over his head lazily.

“Well then kid, sounds like you’ve got a real problem on your hands,” he said. “Thing is, _I_ don’t deal with spooks.”

Nero stopped dead and scowled fiercely at him. Looks like he wasn’t going to get any help from this stupid old bastard—

Dante snapped up the big familiar broadsword from the rack behind his desk. “Which is why I’m gonna take you to see an _expert_.”

“What?” Nero deadpanned, slightly confused.

“Certified spook chaser. C’mon,” Dante said and clapped him on the shoulder twice as he sailed past him towards the door.

Puzzled, Nero followed him. “You have an expert for ghosts?” he blurted.

He realized he couldn’t catch Dante’s eyes as they trudged along. “Yup. Hate dealin’ with spooks myself,” Dante confessed as the door closed behind them. He paused for a second then turned around and locked the doors with a set of keys he fished out of his pocket. “So I hand over any such jobs to a pro.”

Dante refused to explain anything as he followed a confusing meander through the city streets, ducking into alleys Nero didn’t even realize existed to emerge in other streets, leaving the slums for a slightly better-looking, former industrial area. Old brick buildings lined the streets with faded signs and very little indication of being occupied but for neat curtains in some windows. Nero felt that if not for Dante starting to climb up the narrow metal staircase on the side of a large old warehouse, Nero might’ve actually overlooked the entire damn building that was their destination as if it had never existed; his eye just seemed to pass over the building without quite seeing it.

It was one of those older brick industrial buildings with the big steel-frame windows that would’ve once housed a small factory or warehouse. The ground floor was taken up by what looked like a vintage bookstore with a faded retro sign; it was closed. At the top of the narrow metal staircase was a small landing with an innocuous-looking door.

Nero twitched suddenly; the moment he put his foot on the stairs he felt a weird little… zing. There was no way to put it into words, it was just a funny little feeling that shot up his arm and he felt it… tingle slightly. The whispering of his arm hushed suddenly, as if suppressed but the ‘tone’ had changed. It sounded almost excited. He tried to ignore it.

“This is your expert? Some ghost-hunting idiot based out of a warehouse?” Nero sneered. If Dante was just jerking his leg…

“Oh ye of little faith,” Dante snarked and raised his fist to thump on the door a couple of times, quite loudly. “You’re gonna like her. Best in the business.”

 “Wait what do you mean her, this isn’t—“

Dante thumped on the door again and cupped his hand on one side of his mouth. “Hey c’mon Twig, wake up! Got a job for you!” he barked.

“Twig? What the—“

There was an angry staccato of feet on wooden floorboards from beyond the door and a rattle of locks being unfastened. Nero turned to question what the heck was going on and almost felt his jaw sagging. Dante had… vanished? He immediately whipped around. The old bastard had indeed vanished! He hadn’t even heard him go down the stairs!

The door swung open with a small creak and Nero found himself staring at a mass of disheveled red hair. He blinked and looked further down and… nearly knocked himself over the landing’s railing because he came face to face with a pale, bleary-eyed zombie and almost jumped backwards.

Well okay, he was doing the poor woman an injustice but she really looked awful. Her freckled face was fixed in a nasty frown, her lips pursed and her nose wrinkled. She had small bags under her green eyes. She was barefoot, wearing just a very baggy black T-shirt with a heavy metal band logo he couldn’t recognize and purple boy-shorts with _pawprints_.

Nero cursed internally in the brief moment the two of them stared at each other. He recognized her…barely…as the witch that had been involved in that colossal mess he’d gotten dragged into, in Amaro, when Dante and his crazy-ass brother were busy resolving a feud that somehow got both him and this witch caught up in it. Although they’d only worked together very briefly and he vaguely remembered her being fairly normal, Nero found himself being suddenly extremely wary. No wonder his arm had started to tingle.

Witches were bad news.

Wasn’t her name Tess?

“What,” she blurted out, staring at him. “Oh. You.”

Nero could help his snappy tone. “ _You’re_ the expert?!”

“What expert—“ she started and then closed her eyes as though a sudden realization arrived. “Oh that fucking—“

She pushed past him and glared down the staircase. “Dante, you sneaky shithead! You can’t just fucking wake me up and dump a kid at my door! Fuck you!” she barked and against all odds Nero found himself resisting the urge to smile.

“You,” Tess snarled at him. “Get in.”

The ginger reached out and snatched one of his coat’s lapels and unceremoniously yanked him inside. Whatever Nero had expected a witch’s house to look like… it wasn’t this. She shoved him further in while she locked the door again, into a loft apartment of bare brick wall, sparely but tastefully furnished – a simple living room arrangement in the large open two-story space ahead of him, with the large windows admitting a lot of light. The back ‘wall’ was actually two massive bookcases snugly fitted under a mezzanine which was obscured with several folding dividers. A series of handsome folding screens painted in the art deco style obscured the actual contents of the mezzanine. The bookcases were laden with books and knick-knacks and between them Nero could see a curtain hiding entry to another space. A tidy little kitchen with an island counter and chairs was off to one side of the main space.

He had expected a dark space with a bubbling cauldron and a bunch of hanging herbs and stuff like preserved chicken feet and hands in jars. Maybe some shrunken heads. At least, a _broomstick_.

Tess pushed past him, waving him towards the unassuming couch. “Sit. I need five minutes.”

She didn’t even wait for him to answer; she just trudged up a narrow little staircase to the mezzanine. Normally he would’ve been extremely irritated at this treatment… but he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the wrath of a woman when she’s up long before she planned to be. Besides, he remembered that Tess wasn’t as harmless as her tiny stature assumed. He just clomped over to the couch and, after removing the Red Queen from his back and propping it up against the arm, proceeded to sit heavily.

An ‘expert’ Dante had said. Nero was definitely going to punch the daylights out of the old man when he got his hands on him. An expert indeed! Nero didn’t trust witches. The Order had always drilled it into his head that they were nothing more than the natural allies of demons, the perennial enemies of the Order. Even now that his connection with the Order was long over and he knew very well that most of their teachings about witches were propaganda, it was hard to let it all go. Besides, why _should_ he believe that witches were indeed anything but dangerous? Witches can twist people, demons, heck even the world itself to their whim. They don’t fight fairly. They deceive and they subvert, that’s how they survive. What about that makes anyone feel safe?

A soft meow made him look up and also made him realize that he was frowning quite fiercely. His face relaxed as he beheld the luminous green eye of a large grey cat which emerged from beneath the coffee table. It had semi-long fur with a particularly fluffy tail. Its left eye was sealed shut by a pretty big scar running diagonally down from its forehead to its cheek. Nero was taken aback; he’d really gotten used to most animals giving him a really wide berth since his arm had changed. He always assumed that he gave off some kind of demonic aura that drove them away. This cat however meowed again, in what sounded like a friendly way and came closer. Nero assumed it might be more tolerant because it lived with a witch. Probably some weird cat familiar thing.

Still, without thinking about it, he held out his normal hand to the animal and then smiled to see the cat give his fingers some careful sniffs, tickling his hand with its whiskers. Finally satisfied as to his olfactory identity, the cat proceeded to butt its head against his knuckles and Nero’s smile grew. His fingers wandered across the cat’s velvety head and a deep purr emerged from the animal, which enjoyed his ministrations across its back. By the time Tess thumped down the stairs again, dressed, the cat was comfortably curled by his thigh.

Dressed in jeans, a black tank and a pale blue and grey plaid shirt with a black velvet choker tight around her neck, she looked more civilized than earlier but… still not quite like a witch? Not that Nero was certain how witches are supposed to dress. She marched right into the kitchen… and got coffee going.

“So Dante’s dumped you at my door like a lost puppy,” she sighed and ran her hand over her face. “I’d apologize for him but we both know that’s pointless. I hope he’s not just pulling my leg.”

“Is he always such a fucking asshole?” Nero muttered, his thumb tracing soft scratches under the cat’s chin.

Tess snorted. “Worse, sometimes. Don’t let him get to you; the more you show him it bothers you, the more he does it. You take sugar?”

Nero was taken aback. Was she… making him coffee? “One,” he said sheepishly.

She nodded and turned back to the coffee. “So. Why _are_ you here, Nero?”

He hesitated. It was one thing to tell Dante, in search for advice, and it was quite another to lay out his problem before a stranger – a witch! She seemed to sense his hesitation because she let him grapple with it until she stooped over him with a mug that she pushed into his hands. The coffee was warm and aromatic and when he took a sip it trickled down his throat and sent a nice shot of warmth he didn’t think he needed through his body. He felt his limbs release some built up tension like a harshly coiled spring allowed to relax. Unexpectedly a muffin, studded with chocolate chips, was pressed into his Devil Bringer hand.

Tess smiled sympathetically down at him. “I know it’s hard to just air your griefs to a stranger. But you clearly need some help and if Dante brought you here, it’s about the dead.”

She sat across him in an armchair with another mug of coffee. She was studying him with a sober look on her face. Nero took another sip and stared back at her. When he first met her, she had been a wreck, beaten down by her circumstances and wild-eyed. Now he was faced with a cool sort of serenity and quiet self-confidence, despite her tired eyes.

Nero frowned, troubled. He was used to being blunt and blunt he would be. “I don’t know if I want to tell a witch.”

He expected her to get offended, angry even, but she just shrugged and smiled wryly. “I get how you feel but the truth is, when the dead are involved, a witch is _exactly_ who you want in your corner.”

Nero took another gulp of the coffee and absentmindedly, a big bite of the muffin. It… it was really tasty, actually. “Why’s that?” he blurted out, trying to stall for time.

She sighed. “Most witches understand when the dead are restless because they can read the signs and feel it in their bones,” she said quietly. “We know how to placate them, most of the time. I have certain added benefits that make it easier for me.”

He glanced at her, finishing the muffin off. “What benefits?”

She sipped her coffee and looked out her large iron-wrought window. “Did you ever hear about ‘Deep Sight’ in the Order? Nah, didn’t think so,” she continued as he shrugged. “Some people, mostly wiccans, get stuck with… well, I guess you might call it a gift. It’s a pain in the ass, honestly. I can see things unseen to most people, even to some supernaturally gifted folk like you or Dante.”

Nero cocked his head a bit. “Like what things?”

“Like your wacky aura,” she said, making a vague gesture to encompass him. “It’s kinda like Dante’s in basics but I can tell you’re agitated as all hell, it’s almost giving me a headache. And before you ask, no, I cannot turn it off.”

Nero stared and lowered the mug from his lips. “You… can see the dead? Is that what you mean? And you can tell I’m not… human, just from my frickin’ aura?”

“Yes to both. I mean, with you it’s not that hard, you got the arm too but essentially, I can tell what everyone is,” Tess said with a shrug.

At that moment the cat stretched itself lazily and wormed itself under Nero’s yielding arms, lying across his legs unashamedly. Tess huffed at it.

“Really? You’re gonna do that?” she told the cat, annoyed.

It turned its head at her and meowed noncommittally.

She shrugged. “Alright, suit yourself.”

With that little interlude over and the oddly comforting weight and warmth of the cat in his lap, Nero found his reticence dwindling. If nothing else, since Dante trusted her…

“I… actually have no idea what is really going on. Fortuna is just… there’s something really wrong and that’s _after_ all that mess with the Order and Sanctus and the Savior…” he trailed off, realizing she may not have had a clue what he was going on about.

He opened his mouth to try and explain but she cut him off gently, waving her hand in a gesture to encourage him to get on with it. “I know the basics about Fortuna. Shit like that travels fast along the wiccan grapevine. Dante’s told me a bit too. What have _you_ seen?”

How it all tumbled out of him in the end would puzzle him for a while, but it felt good to just forget about his pride and his issues with witches and his sarcasm and just unburden himself. He only ever talked to Kyrie this freely, but between the coffee, the cat and Tess’ calm attention he reluctantly poured out most of the story. She only interrupted his yarn to ask questions related to things that sometimes Nero didn’t think were important, like the attitude of animals in the city or if any unexplained disease had broken out among the populace.

“You sound like a doctor,” he muttered, taken aback by a blunt question about how he slept.

“Or a dentist? I feel like pulling a tooth here,” Tess said and cracked a smile. “Look, I know it’s weird but I work differently than you or Dante. Get used to it. I don’t go barreling into a situation without knowing what’s there.”

She sat back in her armchair, after putting her coffee down and crossed her arms. “You’re actually describing a pretty serious situation, y’know.”

Nero finished off his coffee and put the mug down too. “How so?”

“That the dead are restless after such a massive loss of life is unfortunate but unsurprising. But that they’re starting to screw up the living this much, so fast, _isn’t_ ,” she said and ran her fingers through her hair. “And to enter people’s dreams is even worse. You, in particular, shouldn’t be this affected.”

“Why?”

She gestured to his arm. “Your partly demonic nature should be putting them off. The dead, unless they’re already being corrupted, don’t normally like to hang around demonic powers. You should be harder to affect but you’re telling me you had a nightmare that left a _physical mark_ on you. Nero, that’s serious shit and I’m glad you just shrugged it off. If it had been your friend it might’ve been worse.”

Nero scowled; it hadn’t dawned on him until she threw it in his face. What if it _had_ been Kyrie, indeed? He didn’t question that Credo was angry at him even after death but what if that wrath turned to Kyrie next?

“So what’s going on? That’s what I want to know!”

Tess shook her head. “I can’t tell you anything until I see it. There could be a number of reasons for this, which is why I’m going to come with you.”

She stood up and headed straight for the curtain between the bookcases.

Nero put the cat on the floor and stood up. “No. It’s my problem, I’ll deal with it.”

He heard a short scoff from beyond the curtain. “You can’t, sweetie. Not alone, anyway. You wouldn’t know the first thing about dealing with the dead. Besides—“

She emerged, buckling a small, black drop leg bag to her waist. “I _do_ owe you, for Amaro, and I don’t like leaving my debts hanging.”

Nero felt a sulk sneaking up on his face. Well he couldn’t argue _that_. But he didn’t _want_ to team up with anyone, let alone a witch. On the other hand, though, if Tess was right and things were really that bad… above all he wanted to protect Kyrie. He’d accepted his nature as a part-demon to do so. If it meant accepting he had to work with a witch, so be it; couldn’t be worse than a demonic arm.

“Fine,” he muttered.

“Jeez, don’t be so excited, you’ll hurt yourself,” she chuckled and put on a black pea coat and a pair of thick boots.

He was taken a little aback at her snarky tone but just frowned at her, picking up the Red Queen. Tess bent over the cat, which was standing on the couch with his front paws on the armrest, looking at her and meowing.

“Roy, you just tell Dante to go stick a fork in his eye if you see him,” she sighed and rubbed his head.

Roy, huh? Wasn’t that the name of…?

“Where’s the old dude?” he quipped. “I thought he was your…?”

“He’s around, don’t worry about him,” Tess said and snatched a muffin from a basket in her kitchen then broomed him out the door. “And quit being so wary. I’m going to teach you some tricks about dealing with the dead so you don’t have to put up with Dante’s shit again, sound good?”

Actually, that sounded like a good deal indeed.

“Hey can I ask you something?” he ventured as she hurried down the stairs.

“Yeah?”

“Why did the old man call you ‘Twig’?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! If you're reading this as part of a completed work, I have something very important to tell you! 1. THANK YOU! 2. This is your mandatory rest stop. Drink some water, get up, stretch, then go to sleep and come back in the morning. It'll still be here ;)


	3. Chapter 3

Nero was almost fitful the whole trip back to Fortuna. He kept agonizing over whether Kyrie was alright. He’d only slept for a few hours and his sleep was plagued by nasty visions, although nothing quite like what had landed him at Tess’ doorstep in the first place. If his traveling companion had noticed, she didn’t comment on it. In fact, she seemed to be trying to keep him calm and focused the few times they talked, as Nero felt decidedly taciturn.

What stuck with him was the one time she brought up his arm… but not in the way he expected.

They were sitting, a little past five in the morning, on the deck of the lonely ship that was going to take them to Fortuna, while it refueled. Nero had regarded the mid-sized trawler with apprehension; ever since the disaster, regular means of transport to and from Fortuna Island had deteriorated until they withered entirely. All that was left were these ancient, unreliable and sporadic ferries that were run by borderline scum that fleeced people for everything they had just to get them off the island. It had taken some haggling and no small part of coercion to get these sailors to transport them back to Fortuna. They could make more cash by getting people _off_ the island.

The whole thing disgusted Nero. Even the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull of the ship did nothing to help his mood. He glowered at the sailors crisscrossing the dingy boat’s deck the entire time with what must’ve been a nasty scowl on his face.

“So about your arm…” Tess sighed, chin in her hands with her elbows on her knees

He turned his scowl at her and unconsciously rubbed his wrist. “What about my arm?”

He had rolled his sleeve down and put on that stupid glove again to keep people from staring. He was used to people who caught sight of his arm to either flee in terror or exhibit a kind of morbid curiosity about it that really put Nero off.

“I’ve been stuck with you for a bit and something’s been on my mind,” she said, staring at the sea. “So the Deep Sight thing, right? Well, I may… have omitted to tell you how bloody sensitive it is.”

Nero gave her a sidelong, slightly suspicious look. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Tess made a face. “I don’t just see stuff. I can hear it too. Your arm’s power has been flaring up the entire time and it’s kind of driving me up the wall—no, I don’t mean it like that,” she said, catching the subtle way he tried to lean away from her. “What I mean is that it… whispers a lot.”

“Yeah, it… it does that,” Nero muttered, somewhat taken aback.

He thought that he was the only one who could hear the subtle intonations coming from his arm because they echoed inside his head when he was really agitated and sometimes thrummed through his entire body. He was getting used to it by now but it really could get irritating at times. If he made the effort, he could force them into silence when he wanted some peace and quiet but for the most part, they had almost become part of his natural body’s background noise. It felt weird to find that someone else could perceive them.

“I’m not bothered,” Tess said and shrugged. “I’ll get used to it, it just takes me a while to kind of… adapt, I guess. But until it does, I just want you to do me a small favor.”

He eyed her suspiciously. A favor? What, was this the start of some kind of cracked deal with the de—a witch? All the worst things that he thought he knew about witches trooped through his head, gleefully working him up to instantly regret agreeing to work with the witch.

“What kinda favor?” he asked carefully.

“Try not to grab me with your arm,” she said flatly.

That… that was not what he’d expected. He blinked. “Sorry, what?”

She snickered and sat back, resting her shoulders against the wall behind them. “I don’t mean it _that_ way! Nero, you have the temper of a small bomb and you… kind of suck at being subtle.”

Nero scowled fiercely. “I can control myself just fine—“

“I didn’t say you can’t. I said you suck at controlling your _emotions_ ,” she interrupted. “Well, you do!” she insisted at the beginning of his protests.

“So what are you getting at?” he countered.

“I can sort of sense your mood by your aura and this entire time it’s been acting like a nervous animal. _You’re_ nervous. And it’s making your arm very antsy. It’s ‘greedy’. It absorbs unbound power presented to it, doesn’t it?”

Nero quirked a suspicious eyebrow at her. “Yeah. Sorta.”

She reached over and patted his normal arm. “Right. I’m just concerned that while my Deep Sight is still… hinky around you—“

“Hinky?” he deadpanned.

She gave him an annoyed look. “Well _you_ tell me if you know of a technical term for an unstable second sight that could knock me into a freakin’ coma if it overreacts,” she said irritably but was smirking.

Nero cracked a small smile. “Alright, alright… I think I get the idea.”

“Don’t take it personally; if you grabbed me and your arm reacted, I’m just worried it might go badly. I was persuaded to try and ‘share’ my sight with another wiccan once and… well, I was knocked out for two days. I found out that he got greedy too and when he finally woke up from his coma he wasn’t… quite right in the head, anymore,” she said reluctantly.

“Sounds fun,” Nero groused. “You get this shit with Dante too?”

She chuckled. “I used to. Now it’s only when he’s _really_ worked up and I’m not paying attention to block it off. Look, I’m just putting you on your guard. Demons and their power… kind of have a weird reaction to witches. It’d be stupid to just shoot ourselves in the foot because you’re as excitable as a puppy.”

He flashed an indignant glare at her but was met with a cool smile. His ire sort of withered under her entirely calm demeanor. Before he could respond, one of the sailors on deck shouted at them that the ship was ready to sail. They heard the engine in the bowels of the ship roar lazily.

“You should go rest. You look awful,” Tess observed while standing up. She intercepted his attempt to brush it off. “Hey, even you part-demons have limits. Rest or you won’t be helping yourself when we get there.”

Nero’s irritation started to wane and he stood up and stretched. At least she cared. They retreated to a cramped lounge area below deck where they weren’t under the sailors’ feet. Against all odds, the rocking of the boat and the repetitive, hypnotic thud of waves against the hull did actually send him to sleep because the next thing he remembered, Tess was shaking him awake gently.

“We’re almost there. Chug this down, you’ll need it. The weather is bullshit,” she said and forced a small paper cup of rather unappetizing coffee in his hands.

Hopefully things hadn’t gotten worse since he’d left. He hadn’t had any particularly worrying dreams while he slept, just a vague sense of being… pulled back to Fortuna. It wasn’t necessarily like his simpler anxiety to just be there for Kyrie, it ran deeper.

Without even thinking about it, Nero tossed the coffee back, eager to get off this stupid ship and get a look at the city. It was awful, nothing like the aromatic cup she had given him the day prior. He cringed, forced himself to swallow it and threw the cup away. “ _Ugh_! Is this sludge from a coffee machine or the engine room?”

Tess smiled wryly. “A real witch’s brew, huh?”

Nero didn’t think he’d be in the mood to chuckle.

The weather really was bullshit when they disembarked. It was well into the morning but the sky was overcast, just full of heavy clouds like one giant duvet stifling the entire island, making it look like it was much later in the day. The gloomy light made the wrecked city look almost eerie in the gloom and it riled him up just as soon as his feet touched the dock. He didn’t think he felt anything unusual until both he and Tess were all but swept aside by a crowd of people rushing to board the ship before it’d even properly docked. They gave him and Tess a wide berth, entirely fixated on boarding, pushing and crowding so much that Nero worried someone was going to end up in the water.

People huddled together against the chill with bundles and baggage, furtively glancing back into the city with pale faces and a mounting sense of panic. Nero frowned; he could sense they were afraid.

“Looks like things got worse,” he muttered.

Tess was studying the crowd then back into the city. “Something’s happened alright,” she said. “Do you think your friend’s left the city?”

“No way,” Nero said and his frown grew deeper. “I’ve gotta find her, see what the hell happened.”

He didn’t even bother to check if Tess followed when he tore off towards the western residential district—the one district that had best escaped the disaster of the Savior. The further into the city they went, the worse Nero felt. Something was…pressing against him like a thin, oily film against his skin. He felt cold and his hand felt clammy. His Devil Bringer almost thrummed nervously. The streets were just so empty that Nero seriously worried. Then, just before they reached the fortified district, something caught his eye.

An upright form was pacing down the street towards them. As it advanced, the street around it frosted over with an ice-like substance. It seemed eerily alive and crept up the walls of the buildings on either side and met in the middle, forming a foreboding, almost mist-like wall behind the creature that impeded their progress.

It looked human enough and stark naked, but the body was gray and the skin almost translucent pale and peeling like paint flaking off damp wood. There were massive gashes across the body but there was no bleeding; the blood appeared clotted, oozing like sap painfully slow and dribbling down its limbs. Its features were twisted and contorted unchecked until it barely resembled a human face at all—features all seemed to be in the wrong place. It moved almost easily but there was a deeply unnatural look to its gait, lopping quickly along with the snap of sinew over joint and the limbs jerking as though fighting to move against a rigor. A powerful smell like formaldehyde filled the street, seemingly seeping from every pore of this creature.

“Nero!” Tess caught up to him as they watched the wall form. “Damn, a Lemure. Nero, listen—“

He didn’t.   

He drew the Red Queen and rushed forward to get this thing out of his way quickly. Demons were demons, even if they make your skin tingle unexpectedly, your hackles went up and the air wrapped you in a _sticky_ coldness the closer you got to them. He didn’t pay attention to the way the air quivered around it until it stopped its advance and clumsily reared back, opened a far too wide mouth and uttered a high-pitched screech like metal on metal. The frosted air around it thickened.

Nero felt like he passed _right through_ something cold and his advance slowed to a crawl. He felt hands gripping him, very cold and clammy and relentless. They seemed to be all over him, grabbing his arms, his legs, wrapping around his waist, even pawing at his face. He could see absolutely nothing and yet he felt them, even the light dusting of frost forming on his skin. He gasped and a puff of mist escaped his lips. The Devil Bringer flared but it was smothered by the cold, gripped in a multitude of invisible hands. Far from fighting back, it mysteriously frosted over and its glow dimmed as he felt something just _sucking_ the power out of it. The harder he tried to fight it, the more strangling the grip of the invisible hands got.

This cold was so unnatural it surpassed even the cold of Frosts; it seeped into his very body and sapped him of his power. His limbs were lead weights. The frost around him shifted and Nero could _nearly_ see the outlines of vague forms holding onto him.

The Lemure surged forward, maw open wide and previously dull eyes glinting with a liquid power that seemed eerily like the light of the Devil Bringer. Its mouth split far too much for a human jaw and instead of teeth there was a swirling inky blackness with a single jaundiced and bloodshot eye that spun about hectically and glinted with the same power as its eyes – Nero wondered if it was eating him without even having touched him yet.

“For fuck’s sake, you guys never listen…”

Tess came out of nowhere, appearing between him and the creature in a thin haze of smoke very different from the frost in the air. In her wake came a ringing of soft words carrying a wave of warmth and Nero felt the hands on him slacking. As the Lemure came upon her, Tess moved, a whip of black and red, slamming her boot against its knee and pushing herself off the ground, kicking its jaw shut with the other foot before twisting round and cannoning the thing backwards with a powerful heel kick right to the face. With some breathing room, she whipped around and repeated the soft words more firmly, as though repeating an order. She punctuated them with a wide sweep of the arm through the frost around him.

Warmth returned to him in a rush. The hands reluctantly let go, resisting all the while but ultimately retreated before the spreading warmth. His Devil Bringer tingled intensely, sensing this intriguing, subtle new power it was experiencing. The last time Nero had sensed anything like this was in Amaro when he had briefly teamed up with the witch. She’d done something now but Nero hadn’t got a clue what. He just knew that it was shaking loose whatever was holding him and that was all he wanted. Seemingly pleased with the result of her work, Tess smoothly ducked under his arm as he surged forward, curling the Devil Bringer’s fist and winding back. They were back to back now and she kept speaking – singing almost in an odd language that pulsed outwards and held the frost at bay.

Nero smashed the Lemure into the frost wall behind it with the spectral arm and the resounding sound of shattering bones, then snatched it before it could slip down and smashed it into the ground. He had expected it to be tougher but as he watched the arms flop unnaturally, he realized this thing was human – at least the body was – and yet somehow stuffed to the brim with demonic presence, much like the Scarecrows had been. It was utterly broken, its arm ripped at the elbow and hanging by little more than ligaments and yet it still stood again and screeched once more. The air tightened for a brief moment but the warmth beat it back. Nero refused to allow it to do anything else and jammed the tip of the Red Queen into its open maw, piercing the eye.

The Lemure screeched weakly once and then… just fell apart. The body collapsed into an ugly, floppy heap of battered meat and a foul red-black mass, neither solid nor liquid, oozed out of it sickeningly. The tightness in the air, along with the cold and the oppressive feeling dispersed slowly as the ooze disintegrated gradually. With the Lemure dead, the wall of frost started to fall apart in shards that evaporated rapidly.

“What the hell was that?!” Nero barked, shaking off the last of the sluggish feeling of cold.

Far from cold, his blood was boiling. He was incensed that he had almost bought it from so small and weak a demon. A bout of nasty cussing was ready to rise from his throat. There was a pressure in his temples that he was familiar with; his demonic power was bubbling up fiercely, threatening to burst outwards. Except Tess wasn’t having it. She got in his face with a nasty frown and started _to yell_ at him.

“ _That_ was the reason I insisted on coming with you!” she barked. “Nero, you don’t know _jack fucking shit_ about the restless dead or the demons that can manipulate them! D’you know why Lemures seem so underwhelming?!” she carried on, jabbing his chest with her finger. “Because they have a massive host of enslaved wraiths with them! The city’s teeming with them! _And you blundered right into it_! You can’t fight the dead with a sword or even a demonic arm! That’s just going to get you killed, demon power or not!”

Nero’s indignation simmered down as curiosity reared up. “They’ve got what?” he blurted.

She sighed, rubbing her hand with her face irritably. “Lemures are pretty easy to get rid of… but they’re still dangerous because they can bend the dead to their will. You really can’t see them; that’s why you couldn’t tell. I thought you’d be able to at least see their outlines but—“

“I did see _something_ in that mist.” Nero gestured at the spot where he’d been seized. “That’s what grabbed me? A bunch of fucking ghosts?”

Tess sighed sharply. "Ok, you know what? You can piss on Dante all you like, but _I’m_ not going to put up with this kinda shit from you. You wanna know why Dante _really_ dumped you at my door?"

Nero was taken aback at her sudden sharpness.

"He wasn't bullshitting you. He really doesn't like dealing with the dead. You know why? Because you can't laugh at them.”

“Well yeah—“

She jabbed his chest with her finger again. “In fact, don’t assume you can deal with the dead the way you deal with demons. Demons are easy. They attack you, you fight them and that’s it. The dead are complicated. Death changes everything. They were alive once, and they _remember_. Do you understand?”

Whatever witticisms Nero could think up to counter her tirade felt unequal to the task. She had a point and he really disliked that. These _were_ the dead and demon puppets or no, he did owe them the modicum of respecting the fact that they _had_ been people. Besides… the concern in Tess’ tone made him feel a _little_ bit guilty.

Feeling a little less snappy, he asked: “So why are they helping demons?”

“They don’t _want_ to,” Tess grunted. “Wraiths are restless spirits who fall under the thrall of a demon like a Lemure. Lemures are weak and they have to take over a corpse in the human world but their influence is immense. The dead it enslaves feed it the very life-force of anything they grasp. I was hoping you’d be able to see them and be resistant but I guess you’re still human enough for them.”

“Great…” he muttered.

Nero put away the Red Queen with a sinking feeling he didn’t expect. If the dead could disable him so easily, what the hell could he do if these things were roaming in Fortuna? His need to find Kyrie and get her out of here grew worse. He made to set off again but Tess grabbed his arm.

“Wait. Now that I have a better idea of what’s happening, we can’t afford leaving openings. Someone’s _meddling_ with the dead,” she said. “If I’m right, you can’t afford to be jittery about witch stuff. We’re sorting this out. Now.”

Nero yanked his arm away. “’Sort it out’? And how do you propose to do that?” he fired back angrily. “I haven’t got your bullshit radar vision—“

“You could.”

He stopped and gave her a wary look. She folded had her arms over her chest and was studying him, thoughtfully. “What are you getting at?”

Was she suggesting that he could potentially gain the ability to…well, see the damn ghosts? That would be invaluable in this situation. But it wouldn’t be enough. “Even if I could see ‘em you’re basically telling me I can’t fight ‘em!”

“I could teach your arm how to do it,” she said decisively.

“Huh?” His irritation was replaced with a sudden surge of curiosity and surprise at her assertion. “How?”

She started to pace. “I can’t guarantee it will work. And it may leave you a little more prone to their influence. You can’t kill the dead like you can demons, but I may be able to give your arm a way to see them and push them back.”

“You’re not putting a spell on my arm,” Nero said with a scowl.

“Wasn’t planning to. It absorbs power, doesn’t it? I’m just gonna give it something to eat,” she said and smirked. “I have some experience with… witching up half-demons. I’ll tell you sometime, they’re fun stories.”

Nero narrowed his eyes at her a little bit. It sounded like she knew what she was doing. And true, his arm did absorb and then use any available powers presented to it. Witchcraft and demonic powers couldn’t be that different, could they?

“Fine. What do we do?”

“I need a length of chain. Silver would be ideal but steel will do. Doesn’t need to be fancy,” she said and turned around and started down the street.

She veered towards an abandoned reconstruction site and found a length of chain that had been used, in the absence of a larger crane in the narrow street, with a pulley system to raise wheelbarrows of materials to higher floors. Nero drew the Red Queen and hacked off a piece a few links long. Tess picked it up and after finding a clear piece of street, chalked a moderate-sized magic circle on the ground. Nero watched her warily. He recognized none of the symbols she used but then, in designated spots of the circle, she lit a small white candle, placed a handful of earth from a planter, poured out a small quantity of water from a flask and placed a bird’s feather. Then she stood in the middle of it and held the chain between her hands, her arms stretched out.

She began to utter a series of commanding words he couldn’t understand and Nero felt a funny tingling in his arm. It escalated quickly as the whispering from it grew in volume and tempo, almost desperate. His arm felt like it was pulsing. The chain in her hands started to release sparks and grow almost white hot but she held it firmly without any indication of pain. It clinked with an increasing tempo, the rhythm in synch with her chant. A harsh blue-black aura started to wreath the links and the circle under her began to glow. Her intonation ended with a harsh commanding word and the circle flared. The chain absorbed the blue-black aura that had surrounded it and turned completely black and iridescent. A small pulse of power thrummed from it. She took a deep breath and Nero felt the powers subsiding but his arm still pulsed. Its glow intensified and started to pulse in time with the chain.

“Here. A Fetter of Minos; judge of the dead, if you believe the stories.” Tess sounded tired. “Witches without my perks make these when they need to commune with the dead. They don’t last forever without being fed more power but that shouldn’t be an issue with you.”

She tossed it at him and he caught it with the Devil Bringer. The moment he touched the object he felt a large thrum of power run through him and his arm flared violently. The chain trembled and glimmered angrily, then disintegrated in a shower of yellow sparks, absorbed by his arm, whose power glistened amber for a moment. With demonic objects, the feeling had been an overwhelming rush of power that forced its way through him pretty violently. It was fierce and angry and cold. This was different. It was warm and euphoric and spread through him like the zest of a stiff drink.

He flexed his arm. It felt normal enough… but then his head started to hurt and he felt a persistent pressure behind his eyes, along with a low-drone. He grunted and rubbed his temples. His vision blurred briefly, only to return as he looked up. He nearly jumped backwards. An ethereal, barely-visible form glided right past him, a stooped man in the typical hooded outfit worn by the disciples of the Order of the Sword. The man was largely see-through, fuzzy and ashen gray, as though all color had been drained from him. The man utterly ignored him, flickering like static and sent a cold shiver down Nero’s spine. He looked further ahead and his jaw sagged; more such figures milled around in the street, many more than he had ever anticipated.

It was a sobering sight, actually. All these people were… dead. And they were still here.

“Holy shit…” he muttered.

“You see them.” Tess sounded relieved.

“Yeah,” he blurted, still processing the sight. “Is it… like this for you all the time?”

Tess seemed taken aback at his question but then she smiled wryly. She really looked tired. “Worse, kiddo. But don’t let that bother you.” She shrugged. “Now we should—oh. Hang on, looks like you’ll get to test the arm too.”

Nero quirked an eyebrow. As he watched, the dead that were milling around the street suddenly grew agitated. They turned and Nero realized that suddenly all their attention was on him. They started to amass together and move towards him, slowly at first and then more aggressively.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“They’ve noticed you; that you can see them. They’re still a little under the effect of the Lemure’s power. You are terrible at regulating your own power, Nero, you’re like a lamp to moths. Calm down,” Tess said and actually chortled. “You should be able to push them back now. Just use your arm. Don’t overdo it, though. You can’t kill them, after all.”

Nero focused on that warmth and his arm responded perfectly. As the surge of spirits approached, mouths wide in silent screams and eyes peeled on blurry faces, the Devil Bringer glowed. The ghostly arm that flew forth, sweeping the spirits aside like so much paper, trailed with a liquid amber flame, almost in the shape of chains. The ghosts recoiled from the arm violently, acting as though they were wailing and with just two swipes they dispersed, slowly vanishing from sight until the street was empty.

Nero felt almost smug. This would definitely be an asset. It was kind of eerie though, he could swear he’d felt the ghostly arm touch the dead and all he’d gotten was cold and a very vague sense of sadness.

“You’re in business!” Tess said with a grin. “Congrats, you can now add ‘ghostbuster’ to your resume.” Then her smile dropped. “By the way, don’t ever call me that. It’s enough that I have to put up with it from Dante.”

Nero grinned impishly. “…Kinda suits you, though.”

She stared at him with a deadpan look. “Don’t make me regret teaching you this.”

He just kept grinning. With his morale buoyed they started back down the road to the fortified district where, he hoped, Kyrie was still safe.   


	4. Chapter 4

To his dismay, Nero found the district largely deserted. There were significantly fewer wandering spirits here and those that were ignored them entirely. They were much fainter and lighter in color too, prompting him to look at Tess quizzically. She just told him that these were simple lingering spirits who posed no real threat to anyone and could be left alone. Speaking about them brought a tinge of sadness to her voice.

“Most of them are just… lost.”

Though they’d gotten rid of a couple more Lemures on the way there, there wasn’t any overwhelming presence of demons here, much to Nero’s relief. But there were also no people he could see, just the occasional ghost. The streets were empty. He caught sight of some faces furtively peering out of windows before drawing right back out of sight. People were frightened. But seeing homes where he knew people lived boarded up or worse, deserted with their doors left swinging in the breeze disturbed him. How many had fled the city?

The ghosts lingering outside some of those deserted buildings, looking at them confused and forlorn, were even worse.

The modest apartment building he and Kyrie lived in since the Savior incident stood demurely where he had left it. It seemed emptier though; most floors’ windows were boarded up. Lingering momentarily at the front door and looking up, Nero saw that their apartment’s windows were open. The breeze shifted the curtains gently over the flower-box that Kyrie treasured as one of her ways of coping with what had happened. Nero let go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding; she was here, she was home.

“Home sweet home,” he whispered.

He couldn’t wait to see her. He glanced at Tess, who was examining the street around them, studying what was left of the Order regalia incorporated into the architecture. Normally he’d never think to invite a witch into the privacy and safety of the house he shared with Kyrie but…

Tess appeared outwardly calm but she had wrapped her arms around herself idly and her gaze drifted towards the statue of a Holy Knight of the Order, nestled in a niche on a building opposite the apartment. The statue, decked in the fill wartime regalia of the Order with a sword drawn, depicted an honored general of the Order’s past – Nero couldn’t be bothered to remember his name from those seemingly endless days of lessons. But he did remember why the man was honored: he was one of the Grand Inquisitors and a witch hunter of some renown. Nero realized, to a witch, it would appear like glorifying a murderer. Heck, the entire city could be threatening to someone who knew their kind was hunted by the Order.

“Come upstairs,” he said. “If there are any ghosts I’ll want to know that they’re harmless.”

Tess seemed surprised but followed his lead. The place felt normal enough as he climbed the steps two at a time. It was a lot quieter than he remembered it being. He’d often complained about the shoddy soundproofing of the place but now it felt eerie not to hear the conversation and bustle of people living there. A lonely ghost of an old man stood in front of a boarded up door and wept soundlessly. He looked up as they stepped onto the landing and vanished. Nero sensed him return when they’d vacated that floor again.

The door to his apartment was locked, just as he’d told Kyrie to keep it when he wasn’t there. He knocked on the door and listened. Normally when Kyrie was home she came to the door pretty promptly, but this time the moments ticked by and there was no response.

Worry gripped him; the windows were open so surely she was home. With seconds ticking by he planted his ear to the door and listened. It was faint but he could hear the sounds of a crying woman inside. He glanced at Tess, who looked on with concern.

“Kyrie?” he called but there was no reply.

He hurriedly fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Stepping inside, the place still seemed as normal and inconspicuous as he’d left it, the same old small, simply furnished apartment. There was nothing out of place. No ghostly forms wandering about and no cold. Where was she? Agitated, he strode clean through the front hall and living room and towards the back of the apartment and the crying grew closer.

“Kyrie, it’s me,” Nero repeated, finding worry edging in his voice.

They found Kyrie in the kitchen, collapsed near the rear balcony door. She was on her knees, hunched over, lost to inconsolable crying and sobbing. She wasn’t facing them and as Nero instinctively stepped closer he felt cold.

Kyrie finally looked up and turned to them and Nero almost had a small heart-attack. As she moved, something moved with her. A ghostly form clung to her tightly like a veil, mimicking her movements – or the other way around. It was vague and fuzzy and he couldn’t distinguish any particular features. Kyrie’s eyes were reddened from crying and her face was streaked with tears and contorted by a painful expression.

“Help,” she choked and returned to her heart-wrenching crying.

“Kyrie!” Nero shouted and just about threw himself onto the floor beside her.

His concern was overwhelmed by a flood of anger. So much for Tess’ assurances that the restless dead were harmless. Here he was, watching a ghost doing… something to Kyrie that seemed to be agonizing. The flood of his anger burst just as he grabbed her hands and forced them away from her face. She looked right at him and tried to pull away, frightened – not Kyrie, that _thing_ that was there with her! The demonic power that liked to rise with his anger when he got careless fought to break through and he sensed that his eyes were now glinting an angry red. His Devil Bringer flared violently.

“Nero! Nero, _stop it!”_

Tess sounded so distant in this frantic state he was in. He wanted to get this thing out of Kyrie, any way necessary. The Devil Bringer flared amber and he reached out to try and force that thing off her with its power—

“Please help me…”

He froze. He heard it. It was Kyrie’s voice… and someone else, speaking together. It was so hopeless and sad and heart-breaking to hear it that even in his blinding agitation, it gave him pause. The gathering power in him started to fizzle.

“Please… help… me…”

“Nero! Stop it! She’s not hurting her!”

Tess grabbed him by the shoulder and drew him back. He let go of Kyrie’s hands and almost fell back onto his ass as Tess reached out to Kyrie, who was slumping back too and renewed her crying. The witch crouched down in front of Kyrie and gently took Kyrie’s hands in hers. 

“What’s going on?!” Nero snapped. “What _is_ that?!”

“A spirit,” Tess replied, as though explaining the blatantly obvious. “Nero, calm down. You _really_ need to learn how to separate what is personal and what is _important_ or you’ll end up losing everything. The dead will _always_ find a way to make things personal, even when they mean no harm.”

“No harm, my ass!” Nero barked. “It’s there—it’s doing something to—“

“ _She’s_ trying to _speak,”_ Tess snapped back at him. “She needs Kyrie’s voice to be heard. I think she knows you.”

She gave him such a hard look that Nero felt like a scolded child. He tried to swallow his indignation. Tess took a deep breath, glanced at Kyrie, rubbing her hands soothingly and then back at him, far more gently. “They’re _both_ distressed. She’s desperate to speak but she has no voice that can be heard by the living. Using Kyrie’s voice is all she can do. So please, _listen_.”

Nero sat up and hesitantly reached out and took one of Kyrie’s hands in his. The effect was immediate. The ghost or Kyrie or _both_ immediately tightened the hold and their sobbing started to ebb. They looked right at him and Kyrie’s face started to calm and Nero thought that perhaps, so did the blurry ghost’s.

“Gather your thoughts, spirit,” Tess said softly. “We’ll listen to whatever burdens you.”

She hummed a low, gentle little chant that the ghost reacted to by gradually growing a little more solid over Kyrie and calming. Tears still streamed down Kyrie’s cheeks.

 _“I…please… help…”_ the two voices spoke.

It sounded distant, as if coming from the bottom of a pit and reverberating along its walls multiple times.

 _“Nero… please… help me,”_ the ghost intoned with difficulty. _“He pulled me… back… I didn’t want… to come back…”_

Something in Nero’s head clicked and his grip on Kyrie’s hand tightened a little as he felt his blood drain to his feet. Tess must’ve noticed some change to his face because she gently observed: “You do know her.”

“Eloise,” he muttered.

At the sound of the name the ghost whimpered sadly and nodded slowly. It kept having difficulty speaking, stumbling over its words. _“Please… please help me… help me, Nero. He pulled… me… back… I didn’t… want to come… back…”_

Nero listened and the more she spoke the more he recognized her voice, meshed with Kyrie’s. “What do you want me to do?”  he asked helplessly.

 _“Send… me… back…”_ the ghost pleaded and began to sob again. _“He brought us… back… he holds… our… chains… It hurts… it… hurts…”_

Nero tried to speak but all that came to his throat was a confused croak. He looked to Tess, hoping for some advice but her sad expression made him feel worse. The ghost started to lose coherence, grunting out the words with difficulty.

_“He wants… to kill… must kill… want to kill… but I don’t…WANT… to… LISTEN… Nero… please… send ME… back… make… him… stOP… MAke… HIM… STOP…”_

“She’s aware she shouldn’t be here. Nero, I have to banish her before she starts to get dangerous,” Tess said hurriedly.

Nero let go of Kyrie’s hand and actually pushed away, wanting to put distance between the now agitated ghost who was starting to scream her pleads in Kyrie’s voice. He couldn’t stand to see her—to see both of them suffering.

“Do it,” he grunted.

Tess grabbed hold of both of Kyrie’s hands and began to sing – no, it was a quiet incantation but the rhythm of it was consistent and light like a song. It swelled and pulsed gently, words hanging in the air like wind chimes. Kyrie and the ghost uttered a small gasp and froze, stunned. The ghostly form seemed to shimmer and as the incantation progressed it began to lose cohesion and split off from Kyrie. The incantation ended with a final, commanding line that echoed through the room and Kyrie slumped forward into Tess’ arms with a tired sigh but it was the gentle whisper, full of relief, which threatened to turn Nero into a wreck.

_“Thank you…”_

He reached over and extricated Kyrie from Tess and hugged her protectively. She was awake but dazed, weak and breathing in short breaths.

“Nero…” she uttered and reached up and stroked his cheek with her hand. “It… was Eloise…”

“I know. I know…”

“You have… to help her,” Kyrie said weakly. “She was in so much pain. Something’s happened to her – to all of them. I…I felt Credo too. Somewhere… near.”

Nero looked at her helplessly. “Kyrie—“

She started to cry quietly. “I miss him, Nero… I miss my brother…”

Nero just breathed out with a dull pain in his chest and hugged her against him until she started to calm. He didn’t know how to feel other than _guilt_. But he had to push that out of his mind and do what needed to be done. Standing up, he carefully hoisted her up in his arms. She leaned into him, exhausted but conscious. Tess helped him make her comfortable in the bedroom.

“She’s okay, right?” he asked the witch.

“Yes. Whoever this was, they were kind,” Tess said thoughtfully, propping Kyrie’s head with another pillow while Nero grabbed a blanket because he didn’t like how cold Kyrie’s skin felt. “She’s exhausted from the ordeal but she’ll be fine with rest.”

Nero covered Kyrie with the blanket gently. “I don’t understand what the hell just happened.”

“I’ve seen it happen before,” Tess explained, stepping back to let him get Kyrie comfortable. “Some ghosts want to communicate, for reasons of their own, but they lack the power to reach the living. It forces the most desperate to seek to use human hosts to get their message though.”

“So they possess people?”

“Almost. It’s not true possession in most cases, because people aren’t necessarily sensitive or receptive enough,” the witch said and shrugged. “Stuff like automatic writing works that way. Kyrie’s situation was a little more involved. She may be a little sensitive but not quite a medium.”

Nero scowled. “So it might happen again.”

“While the city is in this state? It could. That’s why I’d like to set up a simple ward to spare her. This spirit was kindly but others may not be so.” She directed a searching look right at him. “Is that alright with you?”

Nero’s scowl turned thoughtful and he almost automatically said no. He may have been willing to risk witchcraft with his own damn self but exposing Kyrie to it was a line in the sand he wasn’t sure he wanted to cross. Then again… he didn’t want to have to see her so tormented by ghosts ever again.

“Alright,” he said before he could regret it. “What do you have to do?”

Tess nodded. “I’m going to need salt. Quite a bit of it, actually. Also, dry chamomile if you have any and a bit of clothing she won’t miss.”

Nero quirked an eyebrow at her requests but complied, heading back to the kitchen after directing her to Kyrie’s drawer. He found a small bag of salt and a tin box amid Kyrie’s tea things that was labeled ‘Chamomile’. He brought both back to the room to find Tess tearing one of Kyrie’s old nightgowns for a sizeable rag.

“This is going to be a bit simple but I think it’ll be enough,” she explained without even looking up at him.

He watched her work quickly and expertly, assembling a kind of pouch from the cloth, into which she put a handful of salt and some of the dry chamomile. Then she tied a bundle of dried herb sprigs which she produced from the drop leg bag she was carrying.

“What are those?”

“Hyssop, rowan and holly. They keep away wandering spirits, as does the salt,” she said, quickly drenching them in in some water from a small silver-colored flask. “The water is purified and blessed; it sorta binds this all together.”

She buried the bough in the salt and tied off the pouch with another bit of cloth and secured it around Kyrie’s neck with a gentle instruction to keep it on for the time being before allowing the exhausted girl to drift to sleep. She then used the rest of the salt to create a rough circle around the bed.

“That’s gonna be enough?” Nero asked, eyeing the little demure thing, unconvinced.

“It’ll do, unless things get really, _really_ worse fast.” Tess said. “I’ll add a ward to your threshold just to be safe, once we go. But now I have an important question for you.”  

“What?”

“You recognized the spirit and clearly so did Kyrie. Who was she?”

Nero bit his lip. He didn’t like to think about this. “She was… a friend of ours – Kyrie’s really. She was training to be a Holy Knight, too. She died near Mitis forest, almost a year ago. Demons. It… that was the day that I got injured,” he muttered, reaching over and rubbing his shoulder unconsciously. The day his arm started to change. “Kyrie got hurt too and… I thought that was the worst of it. Then I heard about Eloise. She must have been doing some training in the forest and…”

He let it trail off. He thought he’d learned to live with the guilt of feeling like he’d failed her – and everyone else who died because of goddamn Sanctus and his insanity. Credo and the people he had known for years in the Order; people who, while may not have been his friends, had still been people he knew by name and knew their stories. Many of them had been blameless in the entire mess. He could keep tell himself that he didn’t give a crap about them until he was blue in the face… but in truth, it preyed on his mind.

Tess reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. Any other time, Nero might’ve shrugged it off, snark a bit about it and marched off but… right now he was unexpectedly grateful for the simple relief of a sympathetic ear and a kind gesture.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But you know… I think that’s why she came here. She _remembered_ that you were her friends. She came to you for help. You might think otherwise… but she felt you could save her.”

Nero smiled bitterly. “Bit too late now.”

Tess shook her head. “No. Sometimes the dead need saving too.”

Nero finally stepped away, trying to regroup. “But why the hell is this happening?”

“Do you recall what Eloise just said?” she asked him back.

Nero was under the distinct impression she was trying to jog his brain. “She said…someone pulled her back.” A lightbulb lit up somewhere in his head. “Wait, you’re saying that someone’s actually… raising the dead on purpose?”

Tess nodded. “Yes. This is really worse than I thought at first. Fortuna’s plagued by a necromancer and unless we find the bastard, the dead will keep getting more troublesome.”

“So what _is_ a necromancer?” he asked. “Are they witches?”

Just as the words left his mouth Nero kind of regretted it. The slow scowl that crept to her face and then was carefully returned to a cool expression of disinterest let him know that he’d offended her and she specifically chose to let it slide, rather than give him shit about it.

She sighed. “You don’t _need_ to be a wiccan but… I won’t say it doesn’t happen. Necromancers are people who meddle with the dead in ways that go way beyond combating them. To them, the dead are just tools.”

She shifted her weight from one leg to another and folded her arms uncomfortably and looked away briefly. “Most necromancers learn their arts over time. There are plenty of ways to twist the dead around to your whim; none of them are good. But… what concerns me is that this one seems to have gotten started with some demonic help. It would explain the Lemures and the prevalence of wraiths.”

Nero bristled. Of course they would. “Demons, huh? I guess that just makes it easier!” he said and gave his knuckles a good crack.

Tess combed some hair off her face. “I really was hoping for a simpler job here, you know. Necromancers are a pain in the butt.”

Her nonchalance irritated him. It was almost like hearing that fucking old man again! “You’re still pretty laid back about it” he snapped.

She shrugged, smiling wearily. “I’m an old hand at this dance, Nero.”

The way she said that gave Nero pause. She sounded jaded; like she’d been doing this long enough.

“How old?” he said before he could stop himself.

She blinked and then scoffed. “Now, now, never ask a lady her age. Suffice to say, it’s long enough to know my stuff. This isn’t my first necromancer.”

Nero blinked and then looked her up and down. “What? You can’t be _that_ old.”

Tess smirked, a little perplexed. “How old do you think I am?”

Nero hesitated. He’d heard witches lived long and with magic like that, who knew whether this was even her real form. She could be deceiving him.

“You don’t look that much older than me,” he hazarded.

Tess stared for a few seconds and then chuckled. “Aw, that’s sweet of you! But uh, no. I’m a little older than that,” she said, ushering him towards the door. “C’mon, I need you to take me to where Eloise died. If someone ‘pulled her back’ then they could only do that either where she died, or where she’s interred. We’ll likely find out something about the necromancer there.”

“Wait, you’re seriously older!?” Nero blurted, suddenly curious.

She shrugged. “Well I’m about the same age as Dante?”

Now _that_ he refused to believe. Dante was an old fart!! _“What?!_ You’re shitting me! _”_

“Again, very sweet of you but let’s go!”

They left the apartment and Tess used chalk to inscribe some symbols around the apartment door’s threshold and then again at the front door of the building. She assured him that, while nothing permanent or potent, they would keep the building ‘off the radar’ of any demons and most ghosts, ensuring that as long as she stayed there, Kyrie would be relatively protected.

“I’m hoping we can resolve this before the day is out, actually. Between us, it’s doable,” she said.

“Good,” Nero grunted. “Getting to the forest won’t be easy. There used to be a shortcut through Foris Falls but that’s… gone the way of the dodo.”

Tess shrugged. “Scenic route? Not a problem. Might need to keep an eye out for more demons or wraiths.”

“What, no broomstick?” Nero scoffed as they set off at a brisk pace.

Tess actually rolled her eyes heavenward and then turned and gave him a look that actually made him snicker.

“Ouch, that often?” he grinned.

“You have _no_ idea,” she groaned.

“It’s not true though, is it?” he asked, curious.

“Hell no,” Tess said and shook her head vigorously. “Who wants splinters in their ass while hurtling wildly through the air in sub-zero winds? I drive a car for pity’s sake.”

Nero couldn’t stop the cackle that escaped him. They had to essentially take a big detour around Lamina Peak along some often precarious paths which turned out to be infested with not only Lemures but Assaults and even some Scarecrows as well, likely stragglers from the ‘cleanup’ operation. Tess could not only keep up with him, Nero found that she was quite ruthless in dispatching demons, leaving nasty little scorched craters full of crispy giblets behind. She also easily trekked through that kind of uneven terrain quickly and even scaled a sheer cliff with no assistance whatsoever. Between all this, Nero allowed his curiosity to have some way and surreptitiously tried to fish for some information on witches.

He was not very subtle.

Tess though seemed to take it all in good humor.

“So, witches don’t worship demons?” Nero asked at some point.

“Well, I don’t know about every witch ever but most know better. And I certainly have better things to do,” Tess sighed. “I mean, I’ve heard that some do? But the next time I hear about them they’re dead and wondering how the fuck that happened.”

Nero snorted. “Then witches have no religion?”

“Nah, most do. You name it, someone probably follows it,” she replied and shrugged. “I just observe some seasonal festivals and go to Sabbaths once in a blue moon to see what others are getting up to.”

Nero quirked an eyebrow and eyed her cautiously. “What happens at those?”

Tess caught his expression and winced. “Do I even want to know what the Order filled your head with about them?”

Nero thought about it for a second and decided that no. She probably did not. He bit his lip awkwardly.

She caught the look on his face and grimaced. “Oh. _Eww._ ” She shuddered. “Sabbaths are actually really boring. It’s like… a family gathering for the mafia. The old biddies are badgering everyone under forty about their life and asking whose kid you are… while everyone else just networks up the wazoo and talks shop.”

Nero was chortling but Tess carried on. “The only good part is all the drinking and the food and sometimes when the planets align, some hijinks happen. Naked dancing under the moon is probably the worst I’ve ever seen and that was the ‘after-party’, I guess, when the elders were gone. And the naked part was optional.”

He rubbed his face, snickering. “So… you guys don’t have one big demon overlord you all obey. I always thought that was stupid.”

“Hell no, you get more than three witches in one place and you are asking for trouble,” Tess giggled. “Not even a great demon could keep more than a couple of wiccans in line; they’d all be busy either quarreling with each other or scheming to kick him in the nards.”

“And no making deals with demons for power I guess,” he challenged.

Tess slowed down and gave him a very careful sideways glance. “Oh, I have no doubt that the Order dug up that shameful secret,” she said and looked away, “that we must carnally know demons to be granted power. And that we do all kinds of unholy things to other people we fuck. It’s hard work, I tell ya.”

Nero actually started and without realizing took a sideways step, staring at her with a morbidly fascinated eyebrow but wide eyes. She stared back with a neutral expression for a whole ten seconds, leading Nero’s gleefully suspicious mind down increasingly worrying ideas.

Then she finally jabbed him with her elbow. “Shit, stop freaking out, I’m pulling your leg,” she snickered. “Fucking hell, those guys at the Order must’ve had a lot of time on their hands, feeding you shit like that.”

Nero’s tense shoulders immediately relaxed and he mentally kicked himself for falling for it. “I knew that was too weird to be a thing.”

“I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but if some fool wiccan wants to go for that, it’s their funeral, not mine,” Tess said, holding up her hands. “I’m good with my own fucked up powers, thank you. No need to complicate things.”

“To be honest I nearly thought you had that kind of deal going with Dante…” he said carefully.

“Because there’s no way I’d put up with that big idiot otherwise, right?” she said with a wide, wicked grin.

“Yeah,” he confessed, mirroring her grin.

“Eh, Dante’s a butt… yet he’s got _some_ merits and when he deigns to act like a civilized being he’s not that bad” Tess said with a shrug. “Anything else you need debunked? I’ll run you the rest of the Wiccans 101 course.”

She numbered things off her finger. “Salt, as you saw for yourself, has no effect on me unless I season my cooking twice, like an idiot. Water is also no problem. I can’t shapeshift because that shit is too complicated for its own good. I don’t use eye of newt or dog’s ass in potions but the coffee I gave you is a personal blend I came up with. And yes, I can indeed curse people and in fact I do so when people need a kick in the ass. Remind me to tell you about the time I cursed Dante to think everything tasted of olives for a week. Fun story.”

Nero actually had to take a moment to catch his breath after laughing. It was just as well he did too, because Mitis forest loomed ahead of them, under the still oppressive dark sky. Fog was rolling down from Lamina Peak. Nero absently started to rub his Devil Bringer’s wrist and flex his fingers.

It was starting to ache a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! If you're reading this as part of a completed work, I have something very important to tell you! 1. THANK YOU! 2. This is your mandatory rest stop. Drink some water, get up, stretch, then go to sleep and come back in the morning. It'll still be here ;)


	5. Chapter 5

Mitis forest had turned into an equatorial jungle while under the influence of the Gate that the Order had opened there. The mountainous forest had become sweltering hot and humid with plants you’d expect to see in the deepest darkest South-American jungle, not a sub-alpine climate. Nero had felt it in his bones that it was unnatural, even back then. He remembered the forest when it was the deep and dark and smelled of ancient, cold pine; when it seemed alive with the sounds of sheltering birds and lurking wildlife. When demons roamed the forest all you could hear was their presence. It mimicked natural life but you knew it in your gut that there was something wrong with it.

Since the fall of the Gate, the forest had recovered, painfully slow as the unnatural flora slowly withered and was replaced by the natural alpine forest struggling to grow back into its former majesty. The climate had changed, becoming damper and fostering fog more easily than it had before. It would roll down the mountain slowly, blanketing the trees in a thick fug that smelled of peat and mildew.

Nero rubbed his Devil Bringer absently. The soreness hadn’t gone away and the further they walked, the further he started to feel a pressure on his back, like a weight sitting on his shoulders. The further he tried to ignore it, the more his arm tingled and he was filled with a sense of dreadful familiarity.

Like Credo was breathing down his neck.

He shivered a little and flexed his shoulders to try and disguise it. Tess hadn’t said anything since he started to feel this soreness or the weird sensation. He couldn’t tell whether it was because she didn’t know or whether she simply didn’t want to badger him.

The fog wasn’t so thick now as it was when they were hiking to it so Nero could easily find the beaten path that had crossed the forest once and led to the Order Headquarters. A good part of the forest had been destroyed by the Savior’s passing but the older structures like the ancient church there were still intact. Wildlife was slow to return to the forest; the only living thing Nero could hear right then was the hoarse call of a toad somewhere, the crowing for a magpie and the buzz of flies.

A branch snapped somewhere ahead.

“Hey Nero…”

Distracted, Nero needed a second prompt to turn to his ginger partner. “What?”

“How much do you know about the forest?” Tess observed, narrowing her eyes towards a spot ahead of them through the fog.

Nero grimaced. “Not a lot. It’s been here since the founding of the city, I guess. It’s just a forest.”

Tess shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

She directed his attention ahead of them and Nero whirled around and peered through the fog. He thought he saw what she did and breathed out through his teeth.

“Is that…?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Tess sighed and marched forward.

There between the dark trunks of the trees, the slow whine of the creaking rope underscored the sad sight. A man hung by a low branch from a length of rope. His limbs swayed in the breeze, the skin taut and discolored with decay. Nero didn’t want to look at his face and rubbed his nose with his hand.

“The fuck was he thinking…” Nero muttered, then saw the faded photograph peeking out of his pocket. A woman and a boy.

“The Savior disaster clearly hit the people hard,” Tess said quietly. “Some people don’t think they have other ways to cope with despair like this. He’s not the only one, either.”

Nero started. “What?!”

Tess gently pushed him away from the body. “Look around.”

So Nero did. At first he thought it was just tricks of the fog, there couldn’t be people wandering around. But then it clicked. Ghostly forms drifted between the trees. He saw one stand forlornly over a heap covered in leaves and what seemed like filthy clothes, propped against a rock formation. Further ahead another rope noose swayed in the breeze, empty. The ferns under it seemed almost swollen. The air smelled of a kind of decay beyond the slow rot of fallen wood. He balked, almost started shouting.

“No way,” he muttered.

“Suicide leaves a very deep mark in a place,” Tess said sadly. “Sometimes it’s so deep that the place just… draws them in. They want the quiet and the peace. Others want to know that they aren’t alone in their decision. From the state of it, I’d say this place has been a suicide spot for quite a few years.”

Nero gritted his teeth and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to compromise what he was seeing with what he thought he understood about the world. Trying to understand why he even cared! He felt a bitter sort of helplessness. How had this slipped out of under his notice? The man was wearing the typical frock of the Order. The body wasn’t even that old! Why would he kill himself?! And why would the forest be so… so full?!

“It… wasn’t like this before,” he muttered.

“This particular area seems to have been, I’m afraid. It’s a pretty isolated part of the woods compared to closer to town,” Tess said. “No wonder the necromancer came here to work their art. Suicide spots are always rife with spirits.”

“…This bastard came here and did something, is that what you’re saying?” he snapped.

Tess remained calm. “I wouldn’t be surprised.” She looked back ahead. “Keep your eyes open. These kinds of places are dangerous. The ghosts of suicides are very potent. Don’t take them lightly.”

Nero wanted to scream and punch a tree. He felt his blood pounding at his temples and his fist clenched so hard, his nails dug into his skin. He couldn’t even describe what made him feel so damn indignant. He didn’t know these people. They weren’t his problem. He could’ve just moved along to the actual problem. But the sight of it, of the forest so full of lost people who didn’t even know rest in death because some asshole was using them for who knows what… it just bothered him.

The snap of branches and the hurried rustle of ferns alerted him to something coming towards them very quickly and before he even thought about it, he’d drawn his gun and pointed it at the direction of the noise. He narrowed his eyes. So far in his experience, ghosts didn’t make much noise…

“Julius, wait!”

“No, I’m getting out of this forest! I can’t take it anymo—aah!”

The first man burst out of the ferns at a run and skidded to a halt when he came face to face with the gun, his hand going for his sword. The second man came right behind him and almost collided into his back.

“What are you guys doing here?” Nero blurted, lowering his gun.

They were both dressed in the regimental garb and uniform of the Holy Knights of the Order. Nero hadn’t ever worn his own outside of formal occasions and only under duress because he didn’t like how it felt on him – not comfortable enough to fight in. They weren’t faces Nero really recognized. He may have passed them by in the HQ or in the training grounds or anywhere else in the past but he didn’t know them. He and his fellow Holy Knights weren’t exactly close. Most had viewed him as a renegade at best – and that was _before_ his arm changed and the whole insanity with the Savior happened.

Now he wasn’t sure what they thought of him.

“I could ask the same of you,” the one named Julius fired back, still tense and keeping his hand over his sword.

His eyes were glued to Nero’s arm and under the hood, his forehead was drenched in perspiration.

“You’re Nero, aren’t you?” the other inquired suspiciously, then fixed his gaze on Tess. “Who is she?”

“Nevermind,” Nero snapped. “What are you two doing here? I thought the Holy Knights were supposed to patrol and protect the city! Instead, it’s demons everywhere again! What have you clowns been doing!?”

“Our duty, unlike you!” the second one fired back. “Some of these demons are unlike anything we have seen before! They can murder without so much as approaching us!”

“People have been reporting ghosts. Ghosts! It’s sheer madness!” Julius groused. “And yet here we are, in a forest full of corpses!”

“They’re right. You people aren’t prepared for Lemures and the dead,” Tess said sternly. “You should’ve evacuated the city while you still had time. You had ample warning.”

“Who are you, to question the authority of the Order of the Sword?!” the second Knight bristled, drawing himself up to his full height.

Tess was entirely unfazed by their hostility. “Someone who knows about these kinds of things. Why are you two up here?”

“Look, just tell us what you’re doing here,” Nero groused. “Then you should probably get the hell out, the forest’s fucked up. Again. Where’s the rest of your squad?”

He knew that Holy Knights didn’t work in mere pairs, _especially_ now when there were so few of them left.

“We were ordered to investigate a disturbance in Mitis forest,” the second one said reluctantly. “The commanders suspected the demonic outbreak had started here once again—“

“But this is different!” Julius screeched. “These demons cannot be fought! No one can get near them! And there are _other_ things here! Things we can’t kill! They’re everywhere! They decimated us!”

“We… we saw our brothers and sisters in arms behave oddly,” the other Knight said while Julius started to pace nervously, kicking a stone with force. “Some simply wandered off and would not respond. Some… some walked into the embrace of these… things. Willingly. We fled when the commander of the squad ran towards one of these shambling demons, laughing like a madman and embraced it. He… he died on the spot.”

“I was afraid of something like this,” Tess groaned and palmed her face.

“Do you know what he’s talking about?” Nero asked her, then looked back at the two Knights.

The second one was just staring between them, puzzled and awkwardly rubbing his arms. Julius was anxiously pacing about, his head twitching ever so often as his gaze darted towards every little noise.

Tess propped her elbow into her palm and brought her other hand to her mouth in thought. “I might and if it’s what I think it is, we need to get them out of here right—“

A strange cackle came from Julius’ direction. The Knight had stopped pacing and stared at a spot within the ferns ahead of him blankly. He cackled again. The air grew very cold and Nero’s arm started to tingle.

Tess suddenly rushed towards him. “Nero, grab the other guy! _Now!_ ”

She was too late, however. Julius smoothly drew his sword and without an ounce of hesitation, drew it expertly across his own neck, resulting in a horrifying spray of blood that erupted from under his hood. Nero was rooted on the spot with the Devil Bringer aching and the fingers cramping up, staring as the Knight made a few strangled gargling noises while blood streamed down his white uniform. He took a couple of uncertain steps forward, dropped his sword and then dropped to his knees and toppled forward.

Tess’ frantic shouting snapped him out of it. “Nero!! The other one!”

It was pointless. The other Knight stared at his fallen comrade for a moment and then started to have what appeared to be a fit. He started to scream and his eyes rolled up into his skull exposing bloodshot whites. He made an awful, gurgling noise. As Nero moved to restrain him, he decked Nero across the face unnaturally hard – Nero heard the man’s hand _break_ when it connected with his jaw. He recovered fast enough to just catch the Knight drawing his sword. Nero had to duck back to avoid having his face sliced off from a lot of hectic, wild swings. He reached out to grab the sword with the Devil Bringer but the Knight threw himself backwards so he was unable to prevent the Knight from flipping the blade around and slicing his own throat. Nero balked, finding himself covered in the resulting spray of blood.

“What the fuck is happening?” Nero blurted, wiping his face as the Knight crumbled to the ground, making a confused and horrifically aware noise.

“Nevermind that now, we need to move!” Tess shouted back at him.

Nero could never quite put it together properly what happened next. A stinging pain crept up his arm and it was so bad that he was distracted for a moment, grabbing his shoulder and hissing in pain. The temperature of the air dropped abruptly and the fog seemed to swirl and thicken like liquid – just like his perception of time.

“There! That’s the problem!” Tess said, grabbing him by the shoulder and pointing ahead of him. “We’ve got her! That wraith, there!”

Her voice sounded distant, as if rising from the depths of the ocean.  

Distracted by the blinding pain, Nero squinted through the thicker fog and saw a menacing ghostly form solidify ahead of him. The figure was dressed in soiled rags, as pale as her translucent, paper-like skin. Her eyes were blackened holes scratched out and torn, her mouth hanging open to an endless darkness with a silent howling. It shambled forward towards him, brandishing a knife.

“What the—“

“No time for questions, you need to get rid of it!”

“But you said—“

“It’s coming right at you, look!”

The wraith advanced and a swarm of other spirits started to gather around, staring and staring with those same empty eye-sockets. Time became a crawl. Nero raised his arm, curling his fist and flaring the power of the Devil Bringer. It hurt so much though, that he wasn’t sure it was responding correctly. He lunged forward but the wraith vanished, melting into the fog. He whirled around and it stood at the side, now uttering a horrible, slow little cackle and as her head lolled to the side drunkenly he noticed the big dark smear on her robes that started at her neck.

Her neck was slashed from side to side. She wailed; a pitiful but at the same time terrifying and _gleeful_ noise.

“Get her! Get her!”

Tess had vanished in the fog. He felt a little sick, or like walking on the deck of a ship rolling around rough seas. Still, he was fixated on wiping out that wraith, especially now that her gaping mouth contorted into a wide, horrifying grin, all blackened teeth.

_Stop._

He drew Red Queen and willed the power of the Devil Bringer through it, revving the blade hard, thinking that the longer reach of the sword might catch the wraith before she blipped out of sight again. He lunged at her again and this time the wraith vanished just before the blade hit it, just to appear behind him, melting into view out of the fog.

“Stay still,” he snarled. “I’ll kill you…quick…”

Wait, had those words really come out of his mouth? His own voice sounded so distant and strangled.

_Stop!_

Whatever was trying to reach him found his mounting anger rebuking it violently. He grunted angrily and flung himself at the specter once again, the Devil Bringer slamming into the ground and leaving a small crater as the wraith lurched backwards, mocking him with its hollow laugh.

_You’re fighting the wrong enemy!_

“Kill her quickly before she gets away!” Tess screamed.

Nero advanced upon the retreating wraith with an angry snarl. He felt a pressure in the back of his head, the urge of the inner demonic power to burst forth, the stinging heat in his eyes--

_You can’t kill the dead, you fool!_

He had to get rid of this damned thing and then everything would be fine. All these confusing voices would shut up. Then he could just turn the blade around and…

…and carve into his own throat. He had to. He had to, she was begging him to do it, she was gripping his hand and leaning into his ear, whispering how lonely she was and how beautiful her sorrow was. She wanted to share her rage and her sorrow and she wanted to cease being so lonely…

The specter ahead of him quivered uncertainly. He took his chance and lunged at it once more. This time he was so close she’d never have time to move! But she did move. Just as the Red Queen crashed into the trunk of a tree, she disappeared and within the span of a blink, she was right in his face, dead, empty eyes staring right into his, mocking grin right in plain view. She grabbed his wrist.

And then the world was on fire. A hot, scorching pain spread from the Devil Bringer and his fist opened abruptly in a hectic reflexive gesture, forcing itself off the sword. The fire travelled up his arm, seemingly right into his head and the pressure vanished and the sweet, terrible words whispered in his ear fled, screaming.

He opened his mouth to shout from the pain and the wraith abruptly smacked its other hand into his face, palm right over his mouth. It forced something into his mouth. He bit down and his teeth crunched on something gritty.

…Salt?

He reflexively pulled away, trying to spit out what was forced into his mouth. It went numb from the assault of unexpected salinity that sent a kind of flicker of realization through him, like a charge of electricity. The fug over his brain lifted – there had never been that much fog, all that was there was this weak little mist that just hung about near the ground. His head suddenly felt so clear and sober that he felt almost sick. The world returned into very sharp focus.

“Snap out of it, kiddo!” Tess barked at him. “You let her in!”

Confused and yet unbearably angry, Nero stumbled back and spat out some gritty crumbs while his mouth ached from all the salt – he spat out chunks of a lump of hard salt and looked up. Tess stood right in front of him, where the wraith had been standing. The Red Queen was plunged deep into the trunk of a tree, all but exploding the aged wood outwards. If what he thought was what had happened, the blade must’ve passed a mere inch from her head when she teleported right into his range. There was a scorch mark on the Devil Bringer.

“What the hell happened?!” Nero snapped, spitting more salt. His mouth felt numb.

Tess tossed him a small flask. “Drink that,” she snapped back. “She found a chink in your armor and got into your head. I won’t ask what she made you see but you had a pretty good go at me. Now pull yourself together because she’s not done yet.” 

Nero took big gulps of water from the flask. It felt so clear and fresh that he almost couldn’t stop. He wiped his mouth and yanked Red Queen out of the tree, shook himself down and got ready for more. The other wraiths hadn’t stopped circling them menacingly, just in the periphery of their sight but now they closed in. A big, undulating swarm of them, all of them sporting the same empty eyes. Some were Holy Knights – heck, he could even see the two poor fools they’d just witnessed dying.

Nearest to them loomed the woman.

She was almost like the wraith he had been seeing, except taller, more ragged and with wild black hair floating around her head, her lips stretched into a thin, bloodied grin and her throat slit so deeply Nero expected her head to just topple over to the side any minute now. A large stain of blood ran down her tattered Order robe. She hovered ahead of them uncertainly, grasping what looked like a large kitchen knife, stained with blood. It seemed the most ‘real’ part of her.

Then she spoke, in a drawn, throaty rattle and Nero felt the blood drain to his feet. She sounded so lost and pitiful… and yet so deadly. He almost shivered. The wraith felt… _wrong_ , somehow. And up to her non-existent eyeballs in demonic power.

_“I’m so tired… so lonely… Won’t you join me?”_

He really had been so tempted to yield to that.

“Concentrate; don’t let her get to you!” Tess snapped him back to focus.

Nero needed little prompting. He angrily lunged forward, sending the amber Devil Bringer careening through her form, forcing her back and dispersing the other wraiths in a storm of wailing. But the phantom’s voice persisted.

_“No! You will join me! I’m tired of being lonely! ALL WILL JOIN ME!”_

Her voice echoed from everywhere. In unspoken agreement, Nero and Tess stood back to back, scanning the forest around them, searching between dark trunks and fog for a sign of the malignant specter.

“Like hell I will!” Nero snarled, glancing about for her next move.

“We need her tether,” Tess hissed.

Nero grit his teeth, eyes narrowed. “Her what?”

“What’s keeping her bound here, the focus of her rage. It must be the knife. Break it!”

Then Tess started to force the spirits back, using the same musical chant that filled the cold air with warmth. Nero peered into the fog, waiting for his chance.

There!

The ghostly arm of the Devil Bringer surged, through the fog and the wraith wailed. She could hide from his sight but the knife was there, plain as day. He could sense its presence, tainted with an otherworldly power not of the dead. The Devil Bringer snatched the blade, which felt so cold it nearly burned his demonic arm again. The wraith howled in indignation as its very core was wrenched violently from it.

“Time to put your woes to bed, sweetheart!” Nero said with a vindictive grin and tightened his fist around the fell blade, snapping it in two.

The wraith let loose a horrible scream that shook the very forest. Her form distorted wildly, flailing and stretching thin until it collapsed in on itself, vanishing into the earth, her scream reverberating through the trees for a few moments longer after she vanished.

“Finally!” Nero groused and sheathed the Red Queen, before whirling around to Tess.

The other wraiths had retreated hastily with their ringleader’s defeat. He could even feel their presence waning.

“What the hell was that!? That wasn’t just a simple wraith,” he growled. “She got into my head!”

“That’s what can happen with suicides,” Tess said dryly. “I’m honestly as surprised at her potency as you. I just about had a heart-attack when she actually affected you. Be thankful that salt and fire were enough.”

“So they’re all like that?!” Nero blurted, gesturing to the forest around them.

Tess shook her head. “No, thank the stars. Suicides can be resentful and angry but they’re rarely this powerful. She straight up possessed people and made them kill themselves! That’s not normal!” She threw her hand up in exasperation. “And she got to _you,_ of all people! Wraiths shouldn’t be able to do that.”

“How come you weren’t affected?”

Tess sighed. “I told you, I’ve been doing this long enough. I know how to protect myself against the influence of ghosts. It takes a good deal of effort to do so, let me tell you.”

Nero rubbed his arm where she’d burned him, thankful for the fact she had the presence of mind to shake him out of it. “Think it’s because of the necromancer?”

“It has to be,” Tess groused and started to rifle through her bag. “I’m almost certain now that whoever they are, they’ve been given these powers and knowledge by demons. Any hack necromancer couldn’t do this. Not to this fucking scale.”

She pulled out, of all things, a magnetic compass and examined it.

“Okay, but why _these_ ghosts, here?”

“Necromancers need a lot of power for their rites. That means a lot of dead spirits to manipulate and use as power sources,” she said, tapping the compass.

Nero’s lips thinned as he clenched his jaw. He understood her implication. “And a suicide forest seems like the right place to start. Damn. Talk about scoring the big haul.”

“Exactly. You’re catching on. Sadly, Fortuna’s well-stocked for ghosts now. It suits the necromancer perfectly. All he has to do is stir them up to create some more,” Tess said grimly. “We need to find where exactly he started here. If we destroy the site we’ll cut his power off here. Besides, we need something to go on to find this bastard.”

Nero folded his arms irritably. “How do we do that?” 

Tess let an angry noise and stuffed the compass into her pocket. “Grr… it’s not use,” she hissed. “He must have manipulated the dead to distort the forest so badly even space has been confused. I can sense nothing except the dead.”

“Ugh… not the first time the place gets fucked up,” Nero groaned. “So… what? We’re lost?”

“The forest is so infested with ghosts and the demonic power the necromancer combined, that I’m having trouble focusing. It’s all over the place. It’ll be hard to find where he might’ve set up his ritual,” she grumbled.

“Demonic power, huh…” Nero said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Then he smiled. “I might have a little trick up my sleeve,” he said.

She studied him a little warily, then smiled to. “Yeah, I’ve noticed your arm likes to light up when something interesting is nearby. Maybe your demonic sense and the Fetter of Minos can do the trick.”

Surely enough, when he calmed down and concentrated, his arm exuded a faint glow that he was familiar with. Something _was_ nearby. At the same time, his arm still ached. It’d gotten worse since they entered the forest, along with that weight on his shoulders. But he shook it off and took a few steps forward, still concentrating. His arm responded, the glow pulsing a little brighter, confirming his suspicions.

“I think I’ve got it,” Nero said, almost amazed.

“Let’s go then. I don’t want us to linger here any longer than we need to,” Tess said with a sharp nod. “These spirits are too restless for my taste.”

They rushed through the trees, aware of the multitude of eyes on them in the mist. Lemures and Assaults attempted to impede them and were all cut down summarily. They encountered several bodies, in various states. Some fresh, like the Holy Knight with his neck deeply cut by his own blade and some old, like the withered corpse of a man clutching a bottle of pills. They were forced to skirt around inaccessible areas several times, such as the sheer cliff too much for either of them to climb.

All the while Nero had to really concentrate to keep the stabbing pain in his arm from overwhelming him. It was creeping up to his shoulder and starting to thrum in his chest by now.


	6. Chapter 6

The sun was more than haflway in its journey to the west by the time they broke through the trees into a path that Nero felt familiar with. They had moved in almost complete silence since their encounter with the Knights and the horrible wraith.

The glow of his arm finally reached a peak right outside the ancient church that was secreted within the forest.

“This is it,” Nero said decisively and finally allowed his arm to relax.

“Well then, let’s find the site,” Tess said with a nod.

The ancient doors were sealed so rather than dally with them, Nero destroyed them using the Devil Bringer. A smell of decay and rot came forth, making Nero cringe.

“Huh… maintenance has really let the place go,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face.

“It smells pretty recent, too” Tess grumbled. “There.”

Nero followed her as she moved in and they came before a circular dais in the rear of the church, where a lectern might have stood once. Traced on the worn stone floor was a large circle, in charcoal, containing other smaller ones and a multitude of symbols. Some were clearly demonic – Nero could feel them as such rather than being able to read them. There were various things laid out in what he deduced must be a careful pattern of sorts in the circle; there were several slain dogs, butchered and left sprawled on the circle, in what looked like deliberate poses. There was at least one disturbingly small, withered human hand, severed at the wrist, planted upright in a pool of hardened wax, surrounded by candles that glowed with a preternatural, grayish ember; leathery pieces of meat that looked like viscera lay in certain spots, along with several pots of water, wine and blood. Two bloodied knives and a sickle were placed in the center. Herbs of some kind were strewn about.

“Hmm, a bit crude but effective,” was Tess only comment.

Nero stared at the entire scene with disgust. His arm throbbed. He could feel something foul from this circle and it made his stomach turn. Moreover, it made him think about the wards he had allowed Tess to place around Kyrie and their home. There were certain uncomfortable similarities between those and the circle of horror in front of him.

He couldn’t help a grunt of disgust and a glare directed at the back of Tess’ head.

She was examining the circle and then turned to look at him. “What?” she asked pointedly.

He folded his arms over his chest. “You want me to seriously believe that this stuff and what you do are that different, huh,” he said quietly. “Because all I see is a lot of the same damn thing if you ask me. You didn’t exactly deny that witches do this kind of thing.”

She simply regarded him without saying a thing for a few moments. Then she sighed, her shoulders rising and falling like old, tired empires. “You know, any other wiccan might’ve decked you by now, for that kinda shit.”

His eyes narrowed. “Feel free to try!”

She rolled her eyes and Nero wanted to almost strike her down because he suddenly felt like he was being treated like a petulant child. “Look. I get that you’re suspicious. I don’t know how to get it through to you,” she said, her face hardening to a weary, exasperated blankness. “You want the straight truth? Witchcraft _is_ cheating. We’re just humans; cheating is all we can do to survive sometimes.”

Then she gestured widely to the circle. “ _This,_ however, is different. Go on, take a closer look; your arm should feel it and you’ll understand. This is a blatant ‘fuck you’ to the way the world works. The dead aren’t _meant_ to come back and do what you want. Nothing of this is about survival. This is just greed, feeding on demonic goading and it _doesn’t matter_ whether it’s a witch or not.”

Nero clenched his aching fist a bit. He didn’t want to get too close to the circle. She was right, it _felt_ wrong. It felt nauseating and cold – not just the gripping, unnatural cold of demons. This felt… empty too; so very empty, and grasping. Like it reached out and tried to leech all the warmth from the world – and then some. Hungry and desolate.

He shook himself down before he could stop himself. That feeling made the ache in his Devil Bringer _worse_. It felt eerily familiar.

“Witchcraft isn’t always nice, or neat or pretty. But the powers of demons _force_ the world to twist and bend to their whim. Witchcraft just _asks,_ ” Tess muttered.

Nero scowled. “So how do we deal with this? Just sweep it all aside?”

Tess seemed to be willing to let his irritability and accusations go, but she still gave him a pretty… odd look before she returned her attention to the circle. “I’ll take care of it. It’s just… hmm.”

“What?” Nero lowered his arms and peered at the circle. The witch looked troubled.

“We’re not alone here. This circle… is guarded.”

True, he could feel something shift and something watching them. He felt too many eyes on him suddenly and the fine hairs on the back of his neck pricked up.

“Hey. Feel like vent some of that frustration?” Tess asked meaningfully.

“Hell yeah,” Nero said and smirked.

It manifested behind them, actually, just as Tess approached the circle again. The air in the large hall thickened and a heavy smell of old silk and dust joined the rotting scent of the circle. Nero sensed rather than heard the approach of the thing and whipped around just as Tess stood up.

A little girl, about 9 years old, stood between them and the doors they’d come in through. She was small, dressed in a soiled, old-fashioned dress that once must have been rather pretty. Her white stockings were caked with mud and the blue velvet was faded and matted with dirt. Her long blonde hair was stringy, escaping from a careful little up-do tied with a shredded black ribbon. Her eyes were large and wholly black, a stark contrast with her pasty white skin that looked like chalk. She simply stood there, staring at them with her hands behind her back.

Her immobility and silence caught him off guard, but he knew immediately that she was far more than she seemed. He could feel it in his bones. Tess said nothing, just stared and Nero thought she looked blanched and rapidly losing her earlier calm confidence.

“What’re you looking at, brat?” Nero grunted, getting impatient with the thing.  

The ‘child’ only blinked; slowly, deliberately.

She actually gave Nero the willies.

Then her thin little mouth, with the narrow, almost puckered lips, quivered oddly and parted. Nero thought she was going to speak at last and thought he spied blackened teeth… but then a large, hairy and completely black spider crawled out of the child’s mouth, scampering down her dress.

Behind him, Tess _whimpered_.

Well… he couldn’t blame her.

He never got any response from the demon thing. When she took a step forward, Nero drew the Blue Rose and pointed the gun straight at her head. More spiders crawled out from under her hair and dress. She came forward several more steps and then opened her mouth further, revealing rows of large, dark and wickedly pointed needle fangs and a mass of writhing spiders.

Nero shot her in the head more out of disgust than anything.

The little body was hurled violently backwards and sprawled onto the floor, a few more large black spiders scurrying out of under her hair and dress.

And then she sat up.

Most of her jaw was now missing, shattered by the force the impact, the skin and muscle torn through. One of her eyes had been knocked out. Spiders poured out of her broken mouth and eye-socket. She stood up but as she did more and more spiders, black and hair and all eyes scuttled out from beneath her dress and hair, making them wriggle as though alive themselves. She seemed to rise on the mass of spiders that poured off her, her little body flopping about from the violence of the movement.

Nero only just noticed that one of her hands was missing.

He felt sick. This demon was made in order to wear the skin of a dead child.

She opened her mouth and an awful screech filled the space. There was a surge of power like the rattling of dried bones. Nero glanced back to see the circle surrounded by a foul power not unlike the spreading cobwebs of spiders.

The spider demon screeched again and Nero focused on it again to see a giant spider, black as the night and bristly like the edge of frayed cloth. The thick legs stretched out of the mass of writhing spiders, languid and delicate. She raised herself up, stark, pale against the dark bristles, a monstrous child’s torso perched on the horrid form of a demonic spider. Smaller spiders scuttled about around it, snapping their fangs. She opened her mouth, those black needlepoint teeth growing and dripping a sickly sweet liquid that sizzled when it touched the ground. Her rattle cry was shrill and hard.

Nero actually took a step backwards, putting his gun away and getting ready to draw his sword.

“I hate spiders,” he muttered.

“How do you think I feel?!” Tess squeaked from behind him.

She sounded terrified, actually.

He chuckled. “Aw, scared of a little spider, shorty?”

“Oh my shit, Nero don’t you start that fucking bullshit right now or I’ll incinerate you with them!!” Tess screeched in response.

Nero laughed. So, the witch was arachnophobic! All the more reason to get rid of this thing fast. The monstrous spider screeched and crouched before launching itself forward, extending two of its legs up, revealing them to possess bony sharp and jagged tips, ready to rend and maul. He ducked sideways just as he sensed the witch vanishing from behind him – he’d have to ask her about that teleporting thing she did.

The spider monster collided with the nearest wall behind them, passing over the circle harmlessly. It turned around, it’s sharp legs clicking on the flagstones and the spiders swarmed. Tess squeaked in disgust and set the mass of them immediately around her on fire. They all screeched and chittered in pain and indignation, retreating from her. They reared up awkwardly and shot thick strings of webbing at her. She drew a knife from her bag, quick as a viper and with a lash of fire singed most of the webbing before it hit her, then cut through the rest. She dodged the ones that pounced at her but one landed on her back once and sent her screaming. She yanked it off and sent a torrent of fire through the lot of them, before porting away to a clearer spot, quibbling obscenities the entire time.

Nero drew his gun and fired upon the spider monster, to draw it away from Tess. She’d handle the small fry, keeping them out of his way so he could get rid of this big ugly thing.

“Where’s a giant newspaper when I need one…” he groused, shooting it repeatedly in the head.

It screeched and leaped in the air, just to land hard where he’d been standing, with a crash of flagstones underfoot. It was stunned momentarily from the impact and that was all Nero needed. The Devil Bringer gleamed bright as it lunged forward and grabbed one of the spider’s legs. He yanked back and with a nasty crunch, the entire leg came off with a spray of greenish, foul-smelling liquid. Thinking quickly, Nero turned it around and used the pointed forelimb like a spear to attack the spider, piercing its exoskeleton and eliciting further screams from it.

“Heh-heh-heh,” he chuckled. “Looks like the exterminator’s here.”

A brilliant flash of fire let him know that Tess had the matter of the smaller spiders well in hand, even though they were now so many of the damn things that they all but carpeted the floor with their black, writhing and bristly bodies, screeching and gumming everything with webbing. They crawled up the walls and along the floor, leaving sticky webbing everywhere. They shot strings of the sticky stuff at him, but he had drawn the Red Queen and sliced through it frantically. Tess seemed to jump between open spaces, leaving patches of fire in her wake where small spiders perished.

The large spider stopped thrashing and lunged at Nero again, screaming in frenzy. He swung Red Queen and blocked its assault with a hard din as its spear-like legs crashed into the blade. The child’s torso loomed over him, screeching, snapping and dripping foul poison down towards him.

He used the Devil Bringer to punch it away and then went at it with a few furious swings. It responded by retreating and rearing up, pointing its abdomen at him and launching a large amount of web at him that caught him off guard. Angry, he struggled and even flared his powers. The phantom form of a demon roared out of him and with effort he started to tear away much of the web just as the spider scuttled up to him, jaws wide. He freed himself just in time to use the Devil Bringer to pull himself aside and out of its way. It came to a halt, plowing aside small spiders and launched onto the wall behind him, scuttling up the wall and after a momentary pause, writhed and spat a glob of something foul and messy at him.

He dodged it by a hair and heard the floor hissing and spitting as it landed. That stuff was caustic.

Irritated, he again launched the Devil Bringer at the beast, once more pulling off one of its legs and dragging it off the wall at the same time. It landed on its back with another screech and flailed, trying to get back up. He was feeling pretty triumphant when a strong jab of pain came from the Devil Bringer and almost brought him to his knees. He grit his teeth and tried to endure it but it was hard to focus.

Tess appeared by Nero’s side, panting and looking very twitchy. “This is taking too much time!”

“Hey, you got any better ideas, I’m all ears!” he groused.

“I do actually. Remember what I said about not grabbing me with the Devil Bringer?”

“Yeah?”

“Screw it. C’mere.”

She actually grabbed his Devil Bringer in her hands and started to recite a series of words that he could only describe as ‘scorching’. At first he wasn’t certain what might happen but then he started to feel a really odd tingling throughout his arm and he sensed it becoming… excited. Bit too much, in fact, and he felt a gathering of power, like a spring being wound very tightly.

“Wait, are you sure you know what you’re doing!?” Nero blurted, feeling fire starting to course through him.

“Honestly? No. You half-demons are uncharted territory as far as witchcraft is concerned but hey! Whatever happens, just make sure you point it at that thing!”

The gathering power found a way through at last and he felt fire in his veins, rushing through in leaps and bounds. It was hot and bright and joyful like a beast released from long imprisonment and his arm ate it up and relished it. It sang like a chorus through him and _tasted_ almost sweet and spicy at the same time. His eyes filled with the glow of liquid fire. He laughed heartily as the zest of the fire filled him and he knew just what he should do.

The spider demon righted itself at last, furious at losing two limbs to the young hunter, just to be confronted with the incandescent blaze of light as Nero flexed the arm once, just to get his eye in. Then his demonic power flared outwards, the ghostly demon rising from him, wreathed in flames, white hot and bright. The pressure in his arm had built up and he did the only thing that felt right: He let it explode and just decided on a direction.  

The spider demon was making another launch at him when the Devil Bringer’s ghostly arm surged forward, fire igniting in its wake like a comet. It caught the spider demon head on and snatched it around the child-like torso. The contact was almost explosive, with a flash of flame. He heard the hiss of burning demon hide and the screech of the spider, trying to extricate itself from his grip. He pulled hard and with a swing, slammed the now burning spider demon against one of the walls of the church, rattling the entire structure and then dragged it along the ground in a wide sweep, squishing any of the smaller stragglers. Tess kept well behind him, just letting him work.

He let go of the spider demon, sending it skidding along the ground to smash into a wall before he reared his arm back once more, balled into a fist and then hurled it forth again. The spider made an ugly crack and then an even worse _squishy_ noise as its abdomen burst, spilling a mass of awful viscera and foul, muck-dark blood. Everything sizzled with the hiss of fire. The spider let a pitiful screech and thrashed weakly, its body coming apart from the fire and the force of the impact, before it finally slumped and started to dissolve into an oozing, burning pile of hardened carapace.

Nero panted, mostly from the excitement and shook himself down as the fiery power in his arm died down, the ghostly demon in his soul fading gently and leaving him with a distinct impression that his arm _whined_ at having this lovely and exciting power wane from its grasp. He stared at his hand as the flame faded, returning his Devil Bringer’s glow to a normal color.

Tess groaned and moved over towards the edge of the circle, sitting hard upon the raised dais after singing away any web. She shook herself down and cringed, palming her face with both hands. “Ugh, about time. Why did it have to be spiders? Whatever happened to good old eldritch abominations?” she muttered.

She looked very tired but Nero was unable to pay attention to that. He felt almost _bouncy_ after that. “That…that was amazing!” he blurted, grinning.

He paced around her restlessly, feeling the urge to stretch and flex his arms, relishing the leftover high from the sensation of witchcraft and fire running wildly through him. This explained a lot of things. No wonder demons went after witches so much!

And that thought sobered him up a bit.

Tess finally stood up wearily and used some fire to burn away the webs covering the circle. “Don’t get any ideas, that was an emergency,” Tess warned. “Like I said, half-demons are weird to spellbind. It only works because _you’re_ partly human and I’m a bit… of a mish-mash myself. I don’t like surprises of that kind.”

She started to burn components of the circle selectively and scuffing out marks and circles.

“But it felt good,” Nero blurted. “The power and the fire. Don’t suppose you could make that permanent?”

Tess stopped and looked over at him. For a moment, Nero thought she looked… _worried_. Like a hint of fear passed her eyes. But then she smiled quickly and scoffed. But it felt a little forced. “Hell no!” she said dismissively. “Now stop acting like you’re on a sugar high, it’s creepy. Also… can you do me a small favor?”

He glanced sideways at her. “What?”

“Don’t… don’t tell Dante I freaked out over a spider demon…” she grumbled.

He smiled wryly. “Deal.”

He managed to get a hold of himself after a few deep breaths, feeling the high finally subsiding. The soreness from before set back in and came with a vengeance, now spreading well beyond his elbow. He again tried to ignore it. Tess stood up and dusted off her hands, leaving the circle a now smoldering, rubbed out mess.

“That should do it. Killing the guardian did most of the work but now the necromancer’s connection to this place should be cut off,” she said. “He can’t exploit the spirits here anymore.”

“Any clues about who or where he is?” Nero asked hopefully.

She turned around and after a moment of silence, frowned at him and folded her arms. “Before we get to that, we’re going to have a very serious talk.”

He blinked at her. “What? We can’t afford to waste time, if you got something, let’s go!”

She did not move, just fixed him with a hard stare like a merciless fury. “We are going nowhere until you tell me the _entire_ truth about this mess, Nero,” she said pointedly.

Nero froze and stared back at her, slowly furrowing his brows into a frown. More of this nonsense? He’d told her everything that was necessary, hadn’t he? He didn’t care to go into intimate details. He rubbed his arm once again, the soreness concentrating below his elbow.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said firmly.

“Bullshit,” she shot back at him. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Nero? I’ve seen you clutching your arm,” she said, gesturing at his arm, which he let go abruptly. “And when I grabbed your arm just now, I felt it. There is something wrong and _you know what it is_ and we are not moving until you come clean.”

She gave him such a fierce look that all the protests and dismissals rising up from his throat, ranging from bullshit to smart-mouthing, fizzled out pathetically before they could cross his lips.

“It won’t change anything,” he just growled.

“Wrong. It changes everything because it’s affecting you. Now spill it, unless you want to _fight me_ on this,” she snapped. 

He grumbled and rubbed the back of his neck. A fight, huh? He could take the low road and pick a fight with her; that was true enough. Nero was certain that in a straight fight against her, he could easily win. However, he had reasonable doubts that Tess wouldn’t settle for a straight fight. Every instinct he had screamed that she was the type who fled from fights she couldn’t win and opted to slit her opponent’s throats in their sleep. With a spoon. And a smile.

Maybe it would be faster to just tell her and be done with things.

So… he did. He told her about Credo, how he had died and what had happened. How he could almost hear Credo’s angry voice coming from his damn arm. She said nothing while he talked, just listened and her expression softened – not with pity, just understanding.

“I see,” she said gently. “You see what I meant when I said the dead will make it personal? You should’ve told me right away. We would’ve dealt with it.”

“Yeah,” he conceded, feeling unusually deflated. “Think I was the target?”

“No, actually,” she said, shaking her head. “I doubt the necromancer has any use for you while you’re alive. But Credo’s ghost is likely caught up in his plan.”

Nero cursed quietly and rubbed his arm again. “So I guess my arm’s feeling wonky because I’ve got a part of Credo’s power in it, huh? Getting feedback,” he muttered.

“That would do it, yeah,” she said and sighed. “I still can’t tell what the necromancer is after but I have a feeling Credo has something to do with it and you’re just caught up in the whole matter. However, now that we know this, we can use it.”

Nero cocked his head a little and raised an eyebrow. “How do we do that?”  

Tess crossed her arms and started to pace, thoughtfully. “This Ascension Ceremony you mentioned. If I understand it right – and I think I do – that ordeal and the power it gave him may have followed him in death. And if someone has brought him back… well, you possessing part of his power created a link between you.” 

A lightbulb clicked on somewhere in Nero’s head and a very definite idea formed that ran along the lines of what she was suggesting.

“So you’re saying that if I can feel something in my arm because of Credo, I might be able to, what? Chase it back to him?” he asked carefully.

“Something like that. You’re catching on.”

“So how’d that work?” he said, rubbing his arm again and staring at it.

He felt foolish; he’d focused too much on training and getting a grasp on how to fight and hide the Devil Bringer that he never thought whether it might have other applications. Learning to live with this thing was like learning how to ride a bike all over again – just when he thought he was ready to take the training wheels off, something new came up.

“You’ll need to focus on the feeling you have. If Credo can affect you, maybe you can reach out to him too.” Tess stopped pacing and looked at his arm thoughtfully. “A word of warning, though. This could become dangerous. Remember what I told you about how some people aren’t ‘attuned’ right to get possessed? With the Minos Fetter you just might be. So _stay focused_. Don’t chase it too far. The dead have nowhere good to lead you.”

“Right…” he muttered, then smiled tartly. “You should write a book on this shit.”

She smiled tiredly. “Maybe I might. ‘Ghost Busting for Dummies’. I’ll force Dante to read it.”

He chuckled. He kinda needed that, frankly. He took a deep breath, let it out and stared at his arm, frowning. He had a rough idea how to focus on the whispers, sort of like how he ‘tuned in’ to the different powers he had absorbed into it. His arm had felt weird since the soreness began and it was still there. He focused on it and the frantic, angry whispering he got from it. His arm felt _prickly_ as he concentrated. He reached out to the aspect of power he had taken from Credo. It had taught him how to grab enemies and use them as effective shields, seemingly directing damage to them rather than himself and had strengthened the arm’s ability to cope with assaults, making him tougher and—

“Ugh!”

Nero grunted and winced, feeling a shot of pain travel through his arm and up to his head, while the Devil Bringer glowed angrily. He’d never gotten that kind of reaction from it before.

“Hold on to it. Whatever it is, focus on it,” Tess was saying.

He tried and was rewarded with more pain and the feeling of something invading his head. He felt something that wasn’t his own – pain, anxiety and a quickening heartbeat that bordered on the terrified. His back felt cold, like he was lying on a hard, cold surface. He smelled cold, crisp air, peaty earth and snow. He felt anticipation and fear together. He heard wind whistling between battlements, between _graves_. All he was feeling were impressions but they were strong. He then realized that a non-stop droning noise in the background was _screaming._ He suddenly felt his demonic powers flaring out of his control, agitated at a foreign presence. He felt the echoes of a foreign power filling him, but not him. It was painful and aggressive and _hungry._

It’s… it’s Credo. This is when the Order did _this_ to him, he thought. Turned him into a demon.

He couldn’t take it. The screaming was too much – it wasn’t coming from the Ceremony, it was happening _now,_ inside his head – inside his arm. Credo, or at least the part of him that Nero had taken, was screaming in agony. It wanted something and Nero hadn’t got the foggiest idea what. He wanted to follow it back to the source, to know what the heck was happening, what had been done to his former friend, brother and mentor. But it was too much. He was chasing it too far.

He forced himself away, felt himself stumble in reality and with tremendous effort managed to wrench himself free of the connection. His arm fell almost silent again, the last echoes of the screaming lingering uncomfortably long. When he refocused he was on his knees, staring at the dirty flagstones.

“Damn…” he groaned.

Tess dropped to a knee beside him. “Deep breaths. Ride it out. Don’t push yourself,” she said and rubbed his back soothingly. “I’m so sorry. That was a lot more violent than I expected it to be. It seems your demonic nature isn’t enough of a buffer against the restless dead. I shouldn’t have let you do this.”

“No, it’s fine,” Nero grunted, palming his face. “I uh… felt… saw… I’m not sure, but it was that… that ceremony thing the Order did to Credo. That turned him into a demon. And I think… the castle.”

He pushed himself to his feet and rubbed the Devil Bringer awkwardly. The ache in his arm was still there, low and dull.

Tess stood up too. “Is this castle where you said you saw him with Kyrie?”

“Yeah. I guess that’s where we’re headed?” he said grimly.

“Seems like it. The place has some significance to you and the spirit,” she said thoughtfully. “If we had more time I could teach you some wards to make you less vulnerable to the influence of the dead, but for now we’ll just have to hurry.”

She only lingered long enough to ensure the necromancer’s site was truly out of commission and then followed Nero as he strode off, intending to head to Fortuna Castle. His arm throbbed angrily with pain but he did his best to ignore it. He’d settle this matter; he’d put Credo to rest again even if it killed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I being mean to Tess? Absolutely.
> 
> Also, 
> 
> Hi! If you're reading this as part of a completed work, I have something very important to tell you! 1. THANK YOU! 2. This is your mandatory rest stop. Drink some water, get up, stretch, then go to sleep and come back in the morning. It'll still be here ;)


	7. Chapter 7

The closer they got to the castle, the stronger Credo’s presence in Nero’ arm felt. Nero rubbed the Devil Bringer with his other hand irritably. It was at its worst when they paused just before the bridge. The castle loomed over them under a dark sky as the sun had rolled low in the sky behind thick black clouds. It looked like it might rain and Nero was tempted to ask Tess whether a necromancer might mess with the weather too but the way she was staring at the castle and not seeming at all concerned with the weather, let him know that might be a bit of a stretch.

“Something bad has happened here,” she muttered. “Recently, I mean,” she clarified to his deadpan stare. “The place has a nasty enough presence but something really stands out.”

“Least we know we’re in the right place,” Nero groused.

Just when he started to believe that they were going to deal almost exclusively with the dead, the doors of the castle groaned loudly open. Nero quirked an eyebrow; he had been pretty certain that the place had been abandoned in favor of the city for its proximity to water. He scowled faintly as half a dozen Holy Knights made an appearance and after a brief hesitation, made their way across the bridge to meet him. Following his recent experiences in the forest, Nero was feeling decidedly uninterested in wasting too much time on them.

“They’re not under any influence that I can see, but still…” Tess murmured quietly.

“They shouldn’t be here,” Nero grunted. “The Order’s HQ is in the city now. This place is a ruin.”

He felt tense as the Knights approached them. One bore the regalia of a lieutenant – Nero bitterly looked back on the very early days of his induction into the Order when he dreamed of donning said regalia, before he grew irritable and disillusioned. Long before the Devil Bringer. He didn’t recognize the guy. After the Savior mess, the remnants of the Order had inducted a lot of new people to replenish their thinned lines, many of them straight from the undertrained cadets or even old farts brought back from retirement. Like this guy; he was old, maybe in his 60s – too old to be out in the field like this and probably too old to be particularly aware of what Nero had been like as a Holy Knight.

The lieutenant didn’t even bother with any niceties. He just strode on up to Nero, hand already on his sword. “Hand the woman over. She is a witch and by the law of our island she must be detained--”

“And potentially executed, ain’t that what you’re getting at?” Nero sneered and sidled a step to the side so that he stood between the soldiers and Tess.

Not so much for her sake but _their protection_. If she got pissed off, she might be tempted to get rid of them with a single blast of fire.

The lieutenant gave him a very hard stare. “If the Order decrees it, then _yes,_ ” he said harshly. “These are direct orders. The squad sent to patrol the woods are all dead. Foul witchcraft is suspected. The castle has been disturbed. And do not think you will be spared the rod, _boy_. We know you brought her here. You will be held accountable for bringing an enemy of the Order to—“

“Enemy?!” Nero scoffed. “Look around, you old fart! The city’s coming apart at the seams, there’s freakin’ demons and _ghosts_ roaming around and you’re bothered by a witch?” He threw his arms out and shrugged. “At least she gives a fuck about his place, which is a lot more charitable than I’m feeling at the moment!”

The lieutenant regarded him coldly and then against all odds drew his sword. “Then you force my hand. You will both be taken before the tribunal—“

Nero was certain that this old fogey had never had the pleasure of knowing him or he’d know of Nero’s issues with insubordination and his obstinate nature. He’d also know about just how spiteful Nero could get. Nero gave him kudos for his guts though; most Knights who had seen what he’d done when the Savior plowed through the city knew better than to cross him. So instead of drawing his sword and possibly being responsible for human deaths, Nero just punched him.

Not with the Devil Bringer, of course, but even after holding back, Nero still laid him out unconscious with one hit.

Of course, that caused the rest of the Knights to jump into the fray themselves. Nero suspected they did so more out of reflex and if they’d taken a moment to think about it better they might not have done so.

By the time all the Knights were unconscious, Nero had learned two things: One, the Order had really grown lax with their training regime since he had been a cadet. These guys were soft and untrained in hand-to-hand. Two, Tess was much better at hand-to-hand combat than any witch has any right to be. She exploited – nay, _abused_ her ability to teleport with vigor, dodging around swings with ease, leaving thin wisps of smoke behind. She used (mostly) harmless flashes of bright flame to daze the Knights. And she hit real hard and brutal for a woman half the size of most of these jocks.

In fact, Nero had to stop and _wince_ when she ported right in front of one of the Knights, struck his sword out of his hand, grabbed him by the shoulders and rammed her knee right into his groin, hard enough to _lift him off the ground_ by a few inches.

Forget magic and the potential of getting his throat slit in his sleep – _this_ was why he would try to never make Tess mad.

By the time all of the schmucks were laid out in various states of unconsciousness and battering trauma, Nero found himself irritated and not really certain why. As much as he disliked the Order, it somehow felt worse now. He had hard proof now of what he might expect when their patience _with him_ ran out.

Unusually for Nero, it bothered him that they were happy to target his… well, his _partner_. He almost blinked at himself. He always made such a fuss about working alone and yet here he was, getting indignant that the Order would be so _medieval_ regarding a witch – but a witch going out of her way to assist him and frankly being a lot more patient with him than he was used to people being. He’d always been terrible at making friends. It was nice to know someone might be willing to put up with him.

And it wasn’t just that…

They regrouped across the bridge. The entire time they crossed it, Nero was wary of any appearance from Credo’s specter but other than the throbbing pain in his arm, there was nothing. He frowned slightly at the spot where he had seen the awful thing.

“From the way you described that spirit, I think it was wise to turn around and not approach it,” Tess said quietly.

He looked away from the spot and awkwardly rubbed his arm. “Ya think?”

“Yes. I think the only reason you could see Credo is because he really willed himself to be seen… by you and Kyrie. You three had a connection. There was some purpose but I can’t say what it might have been,” she sighed.

Nero glanced back across the bridge at the unconscious Knights. “Do you think he didn’t want us to go into the castle?” he asked, suddenly feeling like something clicked.

“It’s a possibility,” Tess said, cocking her head and studying him.

Nero grunted. “They shouldn’t be here,” he said, staring at the Knights. “And there’s no way they should know you’re a witch.”

She crossed her arms and fixed him with her gaze. “Go on,” she said.

Nero paced nervously and kicked a stone out of his way. “Holy Knight squads take direct orders from Holy Knight Executives. I don’t have anything to do with those shitheads anymore. They _shouldn’t_ know.”

Tess folded her arms over her chest thoughtfully. “Then logically, the only person who _should_ know that I’m a witch right now is the necromancer because he will have felt me severing his power sources.”

Nero froze, as the thought rolled around in his head like a grenade, lighting up synapses and making connections that gave rise to a kind of anger he didn’t think he’d ever feel again since the Savior mess. He genuinely had thought that the Order had sunk as low as it could with the Savior. Now he had proof that these power-mongering tendencies were in fact not gone. He felt disgusted. He wanted to turn around, take Kyrie and join the people ditching the goddamn island.

The only reason holding him back was Credo. He felt like he _owed_ it to Credo to see this goddamn mess through.

He wanted to scream but settled for punching the wall closest to him, beside the castle doors. The punch gently rattled the cracked tower beside the door, sending a cascade of debris and dust towards the ground. Tess winced at his outburst.

“So the _Order_ is employing a necromancer…” Nero snarled.

His fist ground against the wall with a gritty crackle and he actually felt his demonic power wanting to burst outwards yet again, snarling angrily.

“Perhaps. But then… why would the Knight mention the Mitis victims in the way he did, if the Order sent those Knights into the forest to essentially _die?_ ” Tess said carefully.

Nero felt his rage cool abruptly, like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. He turned around, raising an eyebrow. “It’s a ruse. There’s a traitor.”

“So it seems. From what I’ve gathered, since the Savior mess the Order was really trying to clean house,” she said.

“It’s too fucking convenient then,” Nero grunted. “Some scum sitting pretty at the new HQ is using his or her position to make sure the Order _doesn’t_ investigate the ghost bullshit. I stay the hell away from them now so I don’t know who’s in charge of what anymore. But then I bring you along and they get _spooked_ and slip an order out somewhere _._ ”

Tess just smiled at him. “Very good. Y’know, I’m really not surprised, but you’re much smarter than Dante makes you sound sometimes.”

Nero felt his face heating up a little bit and he awkwardly scratched the bridge of his nose at her compliment. But he allowed himself a smug little smile. “Yeah well… he’s a fuckin’ idiot,” he muttered.

“I won’t contest that,” she said cheekily. Then she sobered up. “However, this does mean we need to hurry. If we’re right, the necromancer is probably going to accelerate whatever plans they have in hopes to one up us. We need to get to Credo’s resting place.”

He gave her a confused look. “You don’t care that the Order’s essentially hunting you?”

She stared back and blinked. “No. It’s not the first time I find myself persecuted. Sort of a running theme with witches.”

Nero kept staring at her, puzzled. She quirked an eyebrow at him. "What is it?"

"How do you do it?"

"Do what, exactly?"

"Stay calm knowing that basically this entire city wants you dead. And you still give a shit about it."

She smiled in a strange way. “The same way I stayed calm about how you acted when we started this little escapade.”

Nero felt his face get hot and his jaw set. Well, she had him there. He reflected on his initial dismissal of the witch and her then alleged abilities – heck, he'd been dismissive of her entire kind – and he suddenly felt… _embarrassed_. Hadn't he done _exactly_ what he knew some people did regarding him?

"I'm--"

"Okay no, I was outta line there," she intercepted him. "Seriously, it’s fine. I understand how people in the know feel about witches. My kind has never been saints, after all.”

She folded her arms, hunched her shoulders and looked away, but her face was entirely calm. "It’s hard to keep calm. I’ve heard it all. It just doesn’t bother me anymore." Then she looked back at him and smiled warmly. "But... I appreciate that it bothers _you_. Under all that attitude, you’re a good kid, you know. This has all been less about giving a shit for the city and more about making sure you do what you need to do."

Nero tried to muster a smile but it collapsed under the fact that he knew he was blushing and he made an awkward face trying to hide it, running his hand over his mouth and chin sheepishly.

Tess just kept smiling. “Let’s go get ‘em.”

They pried open one of the castle doors and headed inside. The air in the damn place was _cold_. Nero shrugged his shoulders against it briefly and grunted quietly. He’d come to recognize this coldness as the chill of the dead. Then he rubbed his Devil Bringer’s wrist again. The ceaseless cacophony from his arm had gotten stronger, Credo’s presence more concrete. Nero could practically hear him screaming in his head – in rage or in pain, it was difficult to decide. It wasn’t just him, Tess stopped beside him and Nero saw her frown slowly and then hug herself – apprehensively rather than from the cold.

“Far too many people have died here,” she muttered. “Even for a castle this old. It has been a killing field before.”

Nero thought of Agnus’ lab under the place and scowled. “Got that right,” he muttered. “Come on, I think I know just where to go.”

Nero had to fight down the tension growing in his arm. It was really sore and the screaming just mounted. The glimpses of ghosts staring at them from the edges of his vision did not help matters so he was glad to take his frustration out on a couple of Lemures that popped up in their way.

The Soldiers’ Cemetery looked eerie and lonely now, in the gloom and the cold. Back when the Castle was in use there was at least some light to be had. Now it was all sunk in shadow, the wind just whistling ghost-quiet between the gravestones. But even in the low light, Nero could see it. He’d been here before, after the Savior mess when he and Kyrie buried Credo’s sword and built a humble little grave for him, all they could do to try and find some closure.

And now something wasn’t right.

Lemures milled around, surrounded by their enslaved dead, hovering around the rotten bodies of the demons, with their slack jaws and empty holes for eyes. Many of the gravestones were tipped over; some were broken and most were filthy, encrusted with dark stains. The ground was tilled in many places, dug up haphazardly and in places sticks had been driven into the ground, topped with dead birds, filthy skulls of men and animals and in some cases, bottles filled with some dark fluid were tied to their tops.

It didn’t just look wrong, it felt bad too. Nero could feel it crawling up his spine like the fingers of a corpse scraping their way down his back, into the pit of his stomach where it turned into a slowly building _rage_. There was nothing Tess needed to say; Nero already understood things well enough. This was where the necromancer had gotten started. All these dead, just waiting to be exploited.

She didn’t stop him when he plowed through the Lemures. He took out his anger on them, flinging the pitiful dead aside with his arm and tearing apart the sad bodies hosting these disgusting little scavenger demons. By the time the last one died, he was panting angrily with his inner demon’s ghostly form looming over the scattering wraiths as the last Lemure fell. And his rage was not subsiding because there in front of him was Credo’s cenotaph. Its gravestone had a large crack running down it and the stone slab covering it had been broken in three pieces, caved in. The sword that he and Kyrie had so reverently laid to rest was missing.

Just like that, his flaring power withered into nothingness again. A sense of profound defeat smothered his anger. He almost dropped to his knees right in front of it and had to dig the Red Queen’s tip into the ground to steady himself. Then the screaming in his head grew to a dangerous crescendo.

“Nero!”

Tess’ warning came just a fraction too late. The specter grew out of nothing; a tremble of power right in front of him and then exploded outwards, cold and unmerciful.

Hands closed around his neck like vices. His skin screamed in protest as it withered under the biting cold touch. The force knocked him off his feet, back first into a large cracked gravemarker – it split clean in two from the impact.

When Nero managed to peel his eyes open again, Credo was looming right down over him, grim and unforgiving, trying to strangle him with both hands. The specter was a far cry from his old friend and brother in arms. Closer to what he had seen in his nightmares, ashen and phantasmal, skin mottled and peeling like rotting paint. His eyes still dark pits of gouged emptiness. The otherworldly howling coming from the specter contorted the once familiar face into a masque of travesty.

A marbling of sickening, blue-gray veins streaked across him, _pulsing_ nauseatingly, growing into knots and nodules of quivering ghostly matter; waves of foul miasma streamed off him in undulating billows. Nero didn’t need to be told that this was demonic corruption coruscating through the ghost. He fought back; his demonic power flared and manifested itself, pushing back and to Nero’s surprise, meeting tremendous resistance. Credo felt nearly solid even as he reared back the Devil Brigner, flaring the power of the Fetter and swung forward. The impact pushed Credo back temporarily in a cacophony of howling.

At the same time, the pain in Nero’s demonic arm exploded into an ice-cold, almost burning sensation.

“The hell?!” Nero panted, his neck still aching from the initial assault.

Tess was unable to back him up: she was fending off the mass of wraiths that swarmed them once again, in a similar state as Credo, seemingly attracted by Credo’s howling.

Credo reeled for just a moment before lunging back at him with unexpected ferocity, and Nero raised the Devil Bringer instinctively to defend himself. What happened next was never quite clear to Nero but he was pretty sure that his Devil Bringer was hurt. Credo collided with him and seized the demonic arm with both hands. Nero felt the pain peak and shoot straight from his arm to his head, as though he’d touched bare wire. He thrashed with Credo and had the horrible feeling that something was being torn away from him.

He snarled and swung his arm violently, the amber power of the Fetter glowing brilliantly and forced Credo back once again, but this time Nero had to drop to a knee and clutch at his arm. The Devil Bringer was seized up, too tense to move and yet trembling with an awful crackle of power dancing all over it. Not even in the early days of its manifestation had it ever hurt so much. He managed to look up to see that whatever had happened seemed to have affected Credo as well.

The specter reeled back, clutching his head and screaming. It was finally audible; it began low and grew increasingly in volume until it reached an agonizing crescendo. His form blurred as it twitched erratically, shaking his head and contorting his form in ways normally unfeasible for the human shape.

It looked incredibly painful.

“Credo…!” Nero choked.  

The specter howled and thrashed again, teetering drunkenly this way and that. It seemed to collapse onto its knees and then spring back up, the miasma roiling off it in sickening waves. Nero managed to push himself up to his feet but the Devil Bringer hung limply by his side as if paralyzed, still trembling in pain. It throbbed and Nero realized with alarm that the throbbing was eerily in synch with Credo’s thrashing.

He stumbled over to the tortured ghost of his mentor, his friend, his _brother_. With immense difficulty he raised the uncooperative Devil Bringer, glowing weakly amber, and reached out to him. He was almost surprised to find he could touch Credo when his demonic arm rested heavily on the ghostly shoulder. It was cold and somehow, vague.

“Credo,” Nero uttered. “It’s… me. It’s Nero.”

The contact had a strange effect upon Credo’s specter. For an instant, it grew incredibly still and silent, even as the miasma swirled round him. Then it moved sluggishly, swaying in place as if dazed, then twitched. It lowered its hands and between painful twitches, turned its head and regarded him.

It was eerie to look into those empty eye sockets but for a moment there, Nero thought there was recognition in them, somehow. The specter twitched again, almost twisting out of his grip but his hand never moved from where it rested. He wasn’t restraining Credo there; instead, it almost felt like he was somehow _anchoring_ Credo. The ghost stared at him silently, mouth agape, and then the jaw moved vaguely but the words seemed to flow from him rather than his mouth. They seemed to swirl and fill Nero’s head, rattling around his skull like whispers.

_“Ne…ro…”_

Credo sounded so… tired and lost. It almost made him flinch. Never in all the years that Nero had known Credo, had he ever heard him sound so defeated and weak. Then his voice started to rise in that awful howling again and the twitching grew stronger. Credo reached out to grab Nero by the neck once more, his face twisting into an expression of rage.

“Credo, fight it!” Nero snarled, fighting back, pushing against him and never letting go of his former mentor’s shoulder.

How Nero knew that Credo was fighting against something, Nero chalked it up to working from what he’d learned so far about the dead, piece by piece. Or maybe it was just instinct, the demonic part of him recognizing the influence of demons when he saw it. Credo frantically grabbed at him with those painfully cold hands and the Devil Bringer throbbed.

“Come _on!!”_ Nero barked at the specter, “I used to rush at you like this when I was twelve, dammit!! You said only morons do that!”

The words seemed to strike a chord with the specter because again it grew gradually more passive, it thrashed slower and the howling died away and it just stared at him – almost pleadingly, one might say, before it resumed its attempts to harm him.

Nero smiled wryly. For a moment there, in the amber glow of the Devil Bringer’s power keeping him at bay, Credo looked almost – heartbreakingly close – like his old self.

“Hey… remember when you were teaching me to fight…? I’d make stupid mistakes like this… all the time.”

The ghost’s assault slowed. It grew slack and still again.

“You’d bark my ears off and give me shit… but you were worried, weren’t you?” Nero sighed. “You knew I got in trouble all the time. You didn’t know what else to do with me. I get it now.”

 _“Help… me…”_ the ghost strained.

It twitched, its face stretching unnaturally, as though yanked by an invisible chain and its attempts to force itself past the Devil Bringer redoubled. His arm ached again, with the returning feeling of something clawing at it to get to something.

Nero’s jaw set. “Yeah.”

He grunted and shoved Credo off him with a forceful swing, the phantasmal arm of the Devil Bringer sweeping him away in a wash of amber. Credo retreated, howling, into the mass of other wraiths, drawn in to their swarm that circled Nero menacingly.

“Hey, Tess!” Nero bellowed. “Think you can send Credo on his way?”

“I can do you one better!” she called back, lighting up circles on the ground with fire. Each circle that the flames traced pushed the wraiths back. But instead of retreating further back, they would regroup and try to surge forward again with renewed rage. “I’ll teach you to do it!”

“I thought that was witch stuff!”

“This isn’t! It’s just knowledge! The dead can see you and hear you; you just need to know what to say!”

Between another surge of the wraiths she managed to reach him just as the mass of ghosts had another go at him, Credo’s form barely discernible among the lot of them. They now stood back to back as the wraiths closed in.

“Just start reciting with me, don’t worry about the words! The rhythm will do it!” she ordered him.

When she started to speak Nero picked right up with her because he’d already heard her use the same words before. But to his surprise, just as soon as his voice joined in with hers, the words just… tumbled into his head, as if they’d always been there. The power they carried came along and he had the impression that he had just come up against a wellspring of some sort that was simply using him as a way into the world. Through the words.

He had no idea what they meant but it _sounded_ like a prayer of some kind. Each word was sharp like a scythe through grass but there was a strange, comforting feel to them. They danced along a strange rhythm that seemed familiar, even though Nero knew he had never heard it before. It felt old; older than anything else, primordial, almost. Every word they spoke hung in the air, reverberating and _thrummed_ like a heartbeat and every pulse seemed to shock the mass of wraiths back and beat them down.

It built and built, stanza upon stanza and it all came easily through his mouth. His Devil Bringer started to pulse amber with every word in perfect synch with the rhythm of the invocation. The wraiths drew further back with every word, even though they tried to surge forth between them. And every word stripped away more and more of the miasma they carried, turning them sluggish and lethargic. Nero kept his eye on Credo as every word seemed to make his outline clearer and his form more solid, lifelike. It peaked with a thunderous final command, an order, a pair of words with such weight that they almost took effort to say. Its power struck like the din of a heavy, ancient bell in the silence of a cold night.

The wraiths screamed, shrank back and began to vanish. Nero winced.

Credo’s ghost seemed blind to everything, just screaming in pain. Although visibly rid of the miasma of the necromancer he still looked… fractured, even as he started to fade away with the rest.

_“Nero… my power… help… me…”_

The mass of wraiths vanished with a low, echoing din of strained voices. The power from the invocation hung in the air for a few more moments, the words whirring inward gently into silence. Tess breathed out hard and bent over, hands on her knees. Nero was left staring at his arm. It was still sore and almost cramped. It throbbed painfully. He knew it in his gut that all this had something to do with the power he’d taken from Credo. A thought rattled around his head.

As he was contemplating it, Tess came up beside him. “Tell me your thoughts. What did you find out?”

“It’s got to do with Credo’s power,” he muttered. “The Ascension Ceremony. I think…maybe the necromancer wants it?”

She sighed. “I sense a ‘but’.”

Nero started to pace. “It’s just… I know the place where they held it was destroyed with the old Order HQ and everyone who participated and knew about it is dead. I found out about it after the fact and I think I only know half the story. How the hell did the necromancer find out, by talking to the ghosts!?”

“He might have. Compelling a ghost to do something it does not want to is a very risky business. But even then, Credo couldn’t have a full working knowledge of the details,” Tess said carefully. “Can you think of anyone that would?”

Nero thought for a moment and scowled. That idea rattling around his head pawed at him. “Agnus. That fucking alchemist.”

“I kind of expected an alchemist to be involved. I would think he’d keep records or notes,” Tess prompted him. “Easier than wrangling such a spiteful wraith.”

Nero realized something with a start. The idea, fully formed at last, battered down the door.

“The lab…” he muttered. “The fucking lab. We’re… standing right over it!”

He actually glanced around him anxiously. “The lab was supposed to be wrecked and closed off since the Savior bullshit. You said shit like the power from the ceremony would follow Credo in death, didn’t you? If this necromancer is trying to recreate the Ascension Ceremony, they’d need to know that shit. He could do it, right?”

Tess nodded grimly.

“Then that’s where he fucking is!” Nero barked and without thinking clearly whirled around and tore off towards where he remembered the secret entrance to Agnus’ lab had been.

There was a savage satisfaction in having worked this all out. He grit his teeth angrily and his footsteps were hard, almost at the verge of a run but he forced himself to _walk_. He wanted to have a good grip on himself when he faced this necromancer clown. A clear head to _really_ make sure this bastard would pay for what he’d done.


	8. Chapter 8

Nero remembered his way around the castle surprisingly well. Since the Savior crisis the castle had been ransacked for anything useful or valuable, and the underground lab had been sealed. Nobody wanted to know what foul things Agnus had been up to down there, although it had been a great point of dissent among the remaining members of the Order. Most of the lay people were horrified. Surely this broke with the Order’s vows to fight demons. Most of the remaining Order had seen it as a shameful reminder of their transgression, but there were the rare few who felt it might have held useful secrets.

Fortunately, they had been massively outnumbered.

Nero hadn’t bothered much with the debate but he had been there when the entrance to the lab was sealed with explosives and an absurd amount of cement. The first try with the explosives hadn’t quite worked – the entrance that had once been hidden behind that distasteful portrait of Sanctus was sturdier than expected, so the blast only succeeded in creating a large crater in the great hall, which had partially collapsed. In the end it was buried, the tunnel filled in with as much rubble and cement as they could. 

It should’ve stayed sealed.

But as Nero and Tess came before it, it was obvious that their efforts hadn’t been quite enough. The partially collapsed ceiling let in enough light to indicate that something had been digging here. Earth, stone and fractured cement had shifted, as though tilled by a massive animal, although the entrance was still partially covered.

There was a distinct rancid smell hanging in the air, like mildew and rotting flesh. He wrinkled his nose and approached the collapsed entrance cautiously.

“Makes you wonder what excuses the Order has for the state of this place,” Tess said meaningfully.

“He’s right here,” Nero growled and drew his sword.

He was not disappointed. There was a loud rumble from the crater and the loosely packed debris covering the hole exploded outwards violently and a large winged form darted out. Nero cursed angrily under his breath and swung the Red Queen. He caught the large gilded blade as it descended for him and for all intents and purposes completely halted the attacking demon.

“You son of a bitch…” he growled.

A quiet snort, all derision, came from _Credo’s demonic form_ – but it wasn’t Credo himself. The pseudo-angelic shape seemed… incomplete. It was missing the large shield-shaped wing and instead of pearly white, it was… stained. His form was coruscated with sickly, bilious yellow and a moldy, gray tinge. The golden feathers of his wing were tarnished. Nero’s Devil Bringer arm ached worse than ever and he just knew -- a gut feeling, really -- that this necromancer had somehow _stolen_ Credo’s power.

It still hurt to see this form again.

He gave a mighty heave and pushed the demon back violently. It landed gracefully and swung the sword in challenge, tail whipping eagerly. Nero scowled at him.

“Must be fun, just strutting around like you’re some big shot. You’re nothing but a poser in a stolen meat-suit,” Nero snapped.

The demon chuckled. “Bravo. I expected you to get more… emotional. Reunions with the dead are so moving.”

It had a deep, raspy voice that pinged through the space harshly like a blinded moth.

“Sounds like you have experience,” Tess chimed in. “I wonder how long it took you to plan this. Probably longer than you like to admit, for how sloppy it is.”

“Silence!” the demon snapped at her. “What do you know, witch? All you’ve done is break a few tethers and banish a few wayward spirits. I will deal with you once I’ve concluded my business with Fortuna’ ‘savior’.”

Nero scowled deeply at the word ‘savior’ being applied to him. He hated that word and he hated being attached to it – like he gave that much of a shit about the city. If it hadn’t been for Kyrie being threatened, both then and now, he’d have picked up and walked away. He lunged at the demon – the necromancer – oh who cared what you’d call this bastard?

The demon darted back, teleporting easily out of reach and with a sweep of the sword, tarnished gold spears spun into being out of nothing in the air, surrounding him. Nero grunted; he knew these tricks too well by now and carefully choosing his time, he used the Devil Bringer’s arm to snatch one out of the air, swung it hard to shatter the rest and flung the last one straight at the demon.

“You’re forgetting I’ve already done this dance before!” he snarled.

True to form, the spear cannoned the demon back and into the ground with a hard crash. It lay there, dazed for a moment and then screeched and arched up as crackles of power and foul miasma crisscrossed its form before it dispersed with a palpable, gritty shatter. A human stood up, panting, in Order officer uniform that was eerily similar to Credo’s. He was tall, broad shouldered and had greasy black hair that grew well past his shoulders and seemed to be in a state of perpetual disarray. He had a square face with a prominent, hooked nose and looked to be in his early forties. He had quite a few scars crisscrossing his face.

Nero blinked. “The hell…” he muttered.

Tess approached, stopping beside Nero and scrutinized the man curiously.

“You might not remember me, brat,” the man grunted. He had a low, raspy voice.

He smirked sardonically as he righted himself.

“Fuck you,” Nero snapped. “I never gave a shit about the Order bigwigs, but I remember _you_.”

“Deacon, Holy Knight Executive,” the man said and bowed with a flourish. “And who _should_ have been raised to Supreme General, over that presumptuous whelp, Credo.”

“Oh lovely, inter-cult politics. I always love these,” Tess groaned and rolled her eyes.

Nero wrinkled his nose in disgust. “ _Former_ Executive. You were a joke. You’re before my time and even I’d heard of the shit you got up to. Abusing your position, going behind other officers and executing a soldier under your command over bullshit?” He turned to Tess and gestured at the man with a disgusted sweep of the arm. “The Order sunk low but this asshole was a whole new level even _they_ couldn’t reach! He was disgraced and kicked out. Guess I see why.”

Tess seemed unimpressed. She glared at the man uncomfortably. “And I imagine that after the Savior incident, they were desperate enough that they took him back.”

“The Order _owed me!_ I was wronged!” Deacon snapped angrily. “I was in line for the Ascension Ceremony for years before Credo showed his conceited little arse at the inner council! He _stole_ what was mine!”

“Ooh, I get it,” Tess sighed. “You’re bitter and you thought to _steal it back_. I knew it’d be something petty like that, necromancers almost always are. No wonder the poor man’s spirit looked that troubled. I’d be livid too.”

“And that’s your idea of payback?” Nero sneered. “Torment the dead for a shot at _being a demon_? You really will scrape the bottom of the barrel.”

Deacon cackled and suddenly his expression darkened. “You think I _care_ where power comes from, as long as it’s _mine?_ ” he snapped.

He began to rant; spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke and he flung his arm in irritation. “I spent _years_ under the foot of every righteous fool who could lay me into the mud. Then the Order gave me an opportunity to make myself useful. They do like their dirty work but they don’t like doing it themselves.”

His body seemed to writhe with indignation. A vein bulged on his forehead and his face was contorted in a furious snarl.

“I don’t give a dog’s fart what they wanted or what they did or what unholy pacts they chose to make. I don’t even care what becomes of my soul as long as I have power and give the orders!”

His shoulders heaved in indignation with angry breaths. “Credo, the Order’s precious golden boy, disgraced me,” he snapped. “Do you think he really deserved all the credit? He never had to stain his pristine hands with the kind of work I was made to do – or you. We were _both_ in the same boat—“

“Don’t bother comparing us,” Nero snapped. “I never hit that much of a rock bottom! Credo had more worth in his _beard_ than you’ll ever have.”

Deacon sneered. “All the same, Credo was touted as a great leader. Rubbish. He was an idiot idealist who took what was mine. What better reparation than wrenching the power that is rightfully mine from his very soul? It’s been _laughably easy,_ you know. All I need is the last little piece left in _you_.”

The air _tightened_ suddenly. It happened so fast that Nero was unsure how to react. It grew deathly cold and the edge of his sword frosted over. He knew what that heralded but this time it came too fast and too strong for either of them to do anything. Tess uttered a strangled shout as a great mass of spirits swarmed her from all sides and for all intents and purposes, knocked her off her feet and dragged her clean across the great hall. Almost at the same time another swarm surged around him and all of them seemed to focus unnaturally on his Devil Bringer. The dull ache that had settled there all this time now peaked into a horrible, stabbing pain that felt as though something was digging its way out of his arm. Spectral hands seized him around the neck and arms and try as he might, he could not rouse his demonic power to try and beat them back.

Before he could renew his effort, Deacon had stormed up to him and seized his Devil Bringer, which was crackling violently with power. The necromancer, surrounded by a legion of spectral ghosts roiling in foul corruption, raised the demonic arm to eye level and seemed to examine it closely.

“How fascinating. I see why Agnus might have wanted to dissect you now, but fortunately for you, I am only interested in the little bit of a dead soul you have in here,” he said frostily.

Nero could never say what exactly Deacon did next. His arm felt like it was caught in a vice as multiple, barely seen hands closed around his demonic arm. They squeezed, closing tighter and tighter until he could feel them pass through the hide and flesh straight to the bone. It was so painfully cold that it almost burned and he had the palpable sensation of something being ripped straight out of his arm. He screamed in pain.

He _felt_ the absence of Credo’s power form his arm, a void that hurt a lot more than just physically. Deacon was holding in his hand a bright golden light that pulsed. He stepped away from Nero, studying the power he now held in his hand.

“Fascinating. It has life where there should be none,” the necromancer observed idly.

Foul energy like a sheet leaked in every step he took and precipitated off him with every move. 

Nero struggled further against the grasping specters. Their hands crawled up his body and finally started to close around his neck and _squeezed_. It hurt, cold yet hot and agonizing. He screamed in rage and finally his demonic power broke free, dispersing the ghosts with a reverberation of indignant screams. The ghostly demon roared along the demon hunter and Nero stumbled forward. He was in pain but he was also so very angry.

“You…” he snarled.

Deacon just stared at him irritably. “Yes, I suppose I’ll have to deal with you.”

He closed his hand around the power he held and the power hovering around him swelled like a wave. It engulfed him and most of the wraiths clinging around him. Nero could hold back no longer and, still in the grasp of his anger, he lunged forth to meet whatever foul demon the necromancer had become.

His sword collided with a large and heavy shield as Deacon advanced and then managed to smack Nero aside with the very same shield.

Deacon’s form was at the same time horrendous and awe-inspiring. He rode a skeletal equine; the front half was clad in slick, oily black armor with white veining that pulsed and seemed fused to the ashen frame of the beast, skin sticking to bones but surging with power. A jagged short horn grew out of the animal’s face. There was no rear end; the hindquarters were mere wisps but entirely there. Deacon was a perversion of a noble knight: his armor was the same black solid oil-slicks as the horse’s, shaped into medieval-like plate. Between the plates the skin was a sick cherry red and it seemed to be _boiling._ It bubbled angrily under the plates and seemed to slough off his bones, trickling off in thick, syrupy dollops endlessly. The discharge dribbled to the ground and where it puddled the ground hissed angrily and started to decay. He carried a massive shield that reached all the way down to the floor from his seat on the demonic horse and a large blade that resembled the one Credo had once carried, albeit tarnished and stained with the foul purulence of Deacon’s new form.

Oddly enough, this development actually made Nero’s rage come under control. He stood straight and just stared Deacon down with a disgusted cringe.

“Y’know, I thought I’d stay pissed but right now I’m just disappointed,” he snapped. “You went into all this trouble for Credo’s power but now you look like you’ve been in the sun too long, _Slimer_.”

“The form is of no consequence,” Deacon boomed from behind the visor of his skull-like helmet. His voice sounded oddly normal. “I have claimed the power that was rightfully mine. Death is my domain and I see no reason I cannot revel in making that known.”

Nero snorted and hefted the Red Queen over his shoulder. “Didn’t I tell ya that I already beat Credo’s power before? What makes you think _you_ can win?”

A loud laugh came from the death knight and the demonic horse snorted. “Because I’m not as soft as your ‘honorable’ Credo. He might have liked his battles fair but there’s no room for such nonsense here!”

He raised his sword and then pointed it straight at Nero. Instead of a direct attack though, a mass of wraiths surged from behind Deacon and attacked, surrounding the young hunter with a din of angry screaming. He gnashed his teeth; of _course_ the necromancer would do that. All this fuss for the power of demons and he still abused the dead.

Only now could Nero appreciate just _how many_ there were. This was no mere congregation of ghosts. This was legion. He could see, in a blur, all the different, pathetic wraiths, transfixed in their horror and pain and resent of their enslavement. He saw recognition of their horrible situation at last. He saw women, children, old men who should’ve been allowed rest, he saw soldiers of the Order, bearing the scars of their demonic corruption.

So many dead.

The dead of Fortuna.

Nero swung his Devil Bringer back, winding up for a strike as the power over it crackled amber and bright.

But it hurt so much when he sent the spectral fist barreling forth to disperse the ghosts. In fact, he couldn’t even complete the swing because the pain got so bad he dropped to a knee and the ghostly arm faded. He gritted his teeth and snarled in pain. His arm crackled with errant energy and he just knew that whatever Deacon had done to him, it had truly hurt his Devil Bringer. The feeling of something missing from it was palpable. The horde of wraiths rallied after his initial blow and swarmed him, seizing him tightly. Their hands were cold and merciless and he felt them clawing at him, going for his throat and face and trying to peel the very flesh off his bones. They were so frenzied that even his demonic power could not beat them back. He could plainly see the miasma coruscating through them.

It was a good thing he had a partner.

Tess’ voice carried a rush of power like a stampede and the circle of power burned bright under him, little bright threads of flame dancing along the cold floor, joining in circles and symbols that pulsed with power. The wraiths screamed. Their hold slacked enough for Nero to angrily force himself up and shake them off with a violent swing of his arm, the ghostly manifestation gleaming amber.

He glanced back. Tess was on the floor, about fifteen feet back; she looked pretty beaten up from the assault of the wraiths but she was propped up on her elbow and her other hand stretched out on the floor. The threads of fire connected back to her hand and there was a circle of chalk under her. A massive horde of wraiths hung over her, thrashing erratically, starting and stopping as though fighting off lethargy. More wraiths were drawn to the mass, slipping away from Deacon and he cried out in frustration as he lost his subjugated wraiths to her.

The witch’s face was face contorted by concentration and effort. Her nose was bloodied and there were tiny lacerations streaking across her cheek and plenty of bruises. The wraiths above her kept trying to reach down, their grasping hands stopping just before they could touch her. She seemed to be laboring under a horrible weight.

“You’ve got the demonic power you wanted. Now you’ll trouble the dead no longer!” she snarled. “Give him hell, Nero!”

That was all Nero needed, that clean, unimpeded shot at this bastard. He snarled and lunged at Deacon, hand tight around his sword. Deacon rallied from the unexpected loss of his minions and met Nero halfway, the eldritch horse he rode galloping forward with a frantic gait. He caught Nero’ first swing on the massive shield he brandished and the contact made a loud din. The impact had such force that the horse stopped with a protesting scream and the shockwave rattled the hall. Nero almost stumbled back but instead he swung a second time with the same result and the mounting feeling he knew this power all too well. He was caught by the swing of Deacon’s blade as the monstrous knight tried to run him down. He felt a hot, sizzling sensation as the weapon cut deep into his shoulder while he threw himself back.

Deacon spun the demonic horse around and after a moment’s hesitation whereupon he glanced at the struggling witch, he raced for Nero again, raising the great sword and creating a series of jagged spears in the air which all went hurtling for Nero. He thought of grabbing one and firing it back at the damned necromancer but the moment the ghostly arm had grabbed one, he let a strangled shout and flung it away from him clumsily.

Contact with it _burned,_ like it had the same corruptive properties as the melting flesh sloughing off Deacon. It was all he could do to dodge the rest.

The necromancer cackled, stopping his steed to sneer. “Decay is an uncomfortable feeling, whelp! You think that because my wraiths are held back that I am any less a master of death in all its elements?”

Nero shook the Devil Bringer like he was trying to get rid of a cramp. “Master of death, huh? Guess you’ll just have company when I put you into the ground,” he grunted.

“I wonder if you can,” Deacon said and charged once again.

Nero drew his gun and fired a few rounds aimed at the horse, just to see how the beast would react. The impact made it jerk its head back with a scream and swerve a bit but not much else. But he did notice that Deacon raised his shield up, as cumbersome as that seemed. He dodged another attempt of Deacon’s to run him down and then was forced to intercept him using the Devil Bringer, in spite of the pain, to stop him from just mowing down Tess, who was struggling to hold back the wraiths.

This time however, something felt different. Although his entire arm hurt, he felt a soft weight on his shoulder, like a friendly hand resting comfortingly there. It felt so familiar that he actually ignored how much his demonic arm hurt and he was able to seize one of the spears that Deacon manifested. Even as his hand felt like it was on fire, he spun the spear around and flung it straight at the stupid demon horse. It struck low, crushing apart the front legs with nasty snaps. The creature fell forward with a strangled neigh and threw Deacon forward, though he landed with a thud on his feet, smashing the massive shield into the floor.

The struck demon horse flailed, neighing monstrously and trying to rise yet again. Nero followed through, almost as if pulled along by the hand, by snapping up yet another spear that was had struck the ground. He wound his arm back and with a powerful leap, he used it to pin the infernal animal to the floor with a loud crash. It let a horrific scream, tensed horribly and then started to flail before it eventually dissolved into a puddle of caustic, foul-smelling goo.

“Hmmph… not bad,” Deacon grunted.

Nero breathed hard but he was certain now. He was being guided. It was subtle, vague but he just _knew._ And it made him all the more determined to finally put a goddamn end to this bastard. Deacon lunged at him, almost phasing right up to him and their swords clashed hard in a shower of sparks. They exchanged a furious series of blows, blades colliding several times before the Red Queen crashed into the large shield, revving angrily. Deacon seemed desperate to keep the shield between them, parrying most blows with it rather than the sword and deflecting the Devil Bringer with it.

Nero nearly started to laugh; he could read every single move Deacon was going to make with that blade; he’d been over these kinds of exercises so often, so many times with Credo. He remembered often complaining that his arms were going to fall off just for Credo to sigh and tell him to carry on even when that happened.

_I get it now, Credo._

He finally broke the deadlock with a powerful swing, hitting just the right spot on Deacon’s blade to make him reel backwards. Nero lunged in for the killing blow just to be met by that massive tower shield that Deacon swung before him.

It was now or never.

Nero swung the Devil Bringer forward and the ghostly arm sprung forth, a bright pale light streaming from it. It still hurt but he felt Credo right there, with him, telling him silently exactly what to do, the comforting weight of his hand on his shoulder. His friend, his mentor, his brother.

He grabbed the bottom of the shield and although the searing pain from the contact made him want to shout, he gripped it hard and yanked up and back. Deacon tried to resist with a grunt but Nero was ultimately stronger. The massive shield flew out of Deacon’s grip with an angry snapping noise. It flipped end over end Nero snatched it from the air. The now massive Devil Bringer manifestation closed around it, shattering it to pieces with an explosion of energy. All that was left in his hand was the fragment of power that had been stolen from him. It trembled in his hold and Nero regarded it for a moment. It felt so palpably familiar now. Not just a part of his power, the missing piece whose absence had caused him so much pain; it felt like family. He felt the Devil Bringer welcome it back with an almost audible sigh just as Deacon regrouped.

He looked quite pathetic now, left with just the sword and his melting, roiling flesh. But he still stood and blinked to Nero, creating a series of tarnished spears once again. There was no pain this time as Nero seized one and expertly flicked it around and pierced Deacon straight through with it. Deacon grunted and braced against the impact; he didn’t go flying like last time and after stumbling once, attempted to counter-attack with a vicious swing of the sword. Nero was ready, pulling back his sword arm and revving the blade of the Red Queen. He swung forward, following through with an upward motion and easily disarmed Deacon, sending the large blade spinning end over end. It landed point first into the floor a few feet away.

He grabbed the necromancer by the head, ghostly hand coming in straight contact with the molten skull; with his power of Aegis restored, he felt no pain whatsoever. He turned and with a mighty swing he smashed Deacon’s head into the ground with a deafening thud. He lifted him off the ground and then smashed him down into it again before delivering a series of powerful punches that just about drove Deacon into the floor, cracking it and leaving a crater.

He finally drew his gun and jammed it into Deacon’s face, eliciting a choked grunt from the necromancer.

“Credo sends his regards, Slimer” he said with a savage smirk and rolled back the hammer of the Blue Rose, power flowing into it rapidly. “Have fun being dead!”

The gun roared in the great hall and Deacon’s horrific body tensed with an ugly crack for a moment before going limp. The necromancer never said anything other than a strangled scream. The twisted form sagged into the ground, the sloughing flesh puddling in ugly masses exposing bone and flayed muscle. A cloud of particles not unlike golden embers coated in greasy soot drifted off the body, fading gently into nothingness.

At the same time, the mass of wraiths went completely still and then writhed one last time with a chorus of screams before rapidly splitting apart and fleeing. Tess made an exhausted and frustrated noise and slumped onto her elbow, panting hard. She then rolled onto her back painfully and groaned quietly, while the circle of power under her faded.

Nero was more interested in the sword the necromancer had relinquished, however. It seemed to crack and fall apart, exposing an inner core – a very familiar shape that he reached out and picked up reverently.

Credo’s sword shook off the last flakes of the demonic shell it had been twisted into and glinted gently in the gloom. Nero half-turned it slowly and smiled softly. So much regret and so much heartache followed this sword… He’d put it to rest now, properly and for good. Him and Kyrie, the two people who had loved Credo best, regardless of what had happened.  

He secured the sword to his side in haste and went to help Tess, who was still on the floor, breathing hard. He crouched down and helped her sit up.

“Hey, you alright?” he asked sheepishly.

She looked pretty bad, frankly; she was paler than before and looked a bit waxy, her face was quite bloodied and bruised. She grunted as she sat up and gingerly felt her side. “Yeah,” she said tiredly. “This is why I hate necromancers… always just too many angry ghosts in one sitting. Oof.”

He helped her to her feet and let her lean on him. “You don’t look that great,” he muttered. “Is it over?”

“More or less,” she said, then snorted. “I just need to sleep for a day or two. Bet the Order never said anything about how bloody _tiring_ witchcraft is.”

Nero scoffed quietly and was prepared to help her limp out when the sudden snap of bone made them freeze and turn around. Deacon’s body was twitching, quite violently. The decaying flesh had mostly melted off, exposing bone and rotting muscle. The body sat up and then jerked itself up in spasmodic, unnatural motions. Nero grunted irritably but he could see, quite plainly, that what was animating the remains was a specter, denser and more robust than all the wraiths he had encountered so far.

Whatever was left of Deacon finally stood straight and glared right at Nero and took an awkward step forward. “You… arrogant… little brat… you think that death… is the end for me?” the ghost moaned. “You’ve just rid me… of mortality… All I need is… servants.”

The lich stumbled forward and raised his arms. His cracked voice could barely muster the words he was trying to utter and there was a palpable chill in the air and a swell of power.

Nero grit his teeth and made to let go of Tess and finish the bastard off, _again,_ but Tess held his arm.

“Don’t bother. His arbiters are already here,” she said grimly.

Nero followed her gaze and winced. “Whoa.”

The wraiths that had fled earlier were back, standing around them, wispy presences little more substantial than smoke. But they _felt_ different; lighter, unburdened by the taint of demons. But they felt… _angry_. There were men, women, children; soldiers of the Order, laymen and devotees in their robes, tormented souls still bearing the marks of their deaths on them. They were all silent, watching. Their gazes were fixed on the lich.

The remains of Deacon stumbled over his words and he finally seemed to notice the large audience of the dead surrounding him.

“What… are you doing…?” he growled. “You… are mine…”

But they weren’t.

Like a great wave the ghosts surged and rushed towards him, arms stretched and mouths gaping open in a horrible crescendo of groans. Deacon began to scream as they swarmed him; he howled in fear and flailed his pathetic limbs, trying desperately to push them away but dozens of hands seized him, gouging into his ghostly form. He was knocked over and dragged along the ground forcefully, his skeletal fingers leaving deep gouges into the stone floor. He screamed in abject horror, implying an explicit understanding of the horrors that awaited him at the hands of the wrathful dead. The swarm hurtled him into the crater in the middle of the hall and into the passage to Agnus’ lab with an echo of screams that faded along the vast tunnel. There was a soft rumble in their wake and the entire castle felt like it shook before a roar of dust and debris flew from the opening, groaning and shuddering as it settled.

Nero lowered his arm after shielding his face from the vicious revenge of the dead. He reluctantly admitted to himself that he now had more than a healthy respect for the dead. They did remember and they did keep grudges.

“…Credo?” he whispered.

A single luminous form was left behind from the legion of ghosts. His shape was vague and he seemed thin, like a sheet of fine gauze but it was definitely him. The form moved closer slowly, reluctantly and Nero felt Tess gently pushing him forward as she reached for the support of a nearby piece of rubble.

“Nero,” the ghost uttered. His voice was familiar but it echoed through the air as if coming from a long distance. 

Nero felt a little helpless. He had a lot to say but his mind felt empty. His jaw refused to move and he just opened and closed his mouth impotently.

“There’s nothing you need to say,” Credo intoned. “We made mistakes, you and me. But I’m afraid mine cost us both more.”

“Don’t say that,” Nero finally managed. “I’m… I’m sorry. About everything. If I hadn’t—“

Even in his vague state, Credo shook his head firmly. “No. You put my power to far better use than I. I _want_ you to use it. All that I did was to try and protect you and Kyrie.”

“And you did,” Nero choked. He hated that crack in his voice. “But if I had just—“

“You did what was _right,_ Nero and I am forever grateful,” Credo insisted. “I listened to duty more than my own judgement. We were all puppets on Sanctus’ strings. I have regrets but you should not.”

Credo was growing dimmer as they spoke and Nero tightened his fists and without quite knowing why he raised his fist to his chest, in the formal military salute of the Knights of the Order. “I’ll… try.”

Even as he faded Credo stood straighter and reciprocated. “Please, look after Kyrie and _yourself._ Farewell.”

He faded gently into thin mist and Nero relaxed but wasn’t quite ready to move. He looked up through a hole in the ceiling, to the darkening sky. His eyes stung. He didn’t want to let the stinging win. He only turned around when he was sure that his eyes were quite dry. He was entirely ready to leave this place. He had one thing left to do but he would like Kyrie to be there with him for it.

He returned to Tess, who seemed to have rallied from her ordeal. She didn’t ask him if he was alright, but her small smile seemed to say she was glad he was holding together.

“Hey… the ghosts aren’t just going to go away, are they?” he asked, helping her walk out.

“No, not for good, I’m afraid,” she sighed. “Fortuna’s been inescapably marked by death. In fact… I’m not even sure I’d advise staying here. It’s a land for the dead now, not the living.”

“Hmph… can’t say it hasn’t been on my mind since before this…” Nero grumbled. “And uh… thanks for everything.”

She just smiled warmly.

It was cold and getting dark when they reached the front gate. By then Tess could walk unassisted and Nero was anxious to go see Kyrie.

“Nero!”

He was startled to hear her voice and almost stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her running towards him from the bridge. He moved forward to meet her and she all but leapt in his arms. He hugged her protectively and almost laughed because honestly, he had expected to find her still worn out from her ordeal all the way back at the apartment.

“Kyrie? What are you doing here? How did you—“

“Well, you pinched my usual baggage, kid! I got kinda lonely!”

Nero’s entire body tensed suddenly. “What the hell, old man!!”

Dante sauntered in Kyrie’s wake with his hands leisurely in his pockets and what might only be described as a smug grin on his face.

“You said you didn’t do ghosts! What are you doing here?!”

“He showed up at the apartment to make sure I was alright. I was worried about you so I asked him to escort me to you,” Kyrie said, almost apologetically. “I drove us up here.”

She wasn’t the least bit sorry, though, and it showed.

“Wha…?” Nero blurted.

“When I got bored of chasing you two, I thought I’d make sure the little lady got here on time for the finale,” Dante shrugged.

Now Nero felt quite livid. He had thought that Dante had really just dumped him at Tess’ door and left, refusing to get involved. And yet, here he had ample evidence that not only had Dante shown up anyway, he had actually been _spectating_ the whole thing. He was about to let go of Kyrie and wipe off that smirk from the old fucker’s face with the soles of his feet, _again_ , but Tess walked past them, patting him on the shoulder.

“Don’t fall for his shit,” she muttered.

Then she gave a warm smile to Kyrie and the two women shared a quiet, meaningful gaze and grasped each other’s hand briefly in greeting, before the witch tiredly ambled towards Dante.

Still quite indignant, Nero just held Kyrie’s hand and glowered at the demon-hunter. “Why’d you even bother, old man!? Did you just come here to kick back and stalk me!?”

Dante kept grinning in the face of Nero’s indignation and shrugged. “Nah. I was worried about your ass, kiddo, all alone with a wicked witch.”

Tess had leaned against the stone balustrade of the bridge and folded her arms with a long-suffering eye-roll. “Oh _har-de-har_ , Dante,” she snarked. “You’re wannabe mentor of the year.”

He scoffed at her. “C’mon, Twig, you know what you’re like when you’re pissed,” he said and then gestured at Nero. “Kid’s got a talent for makin’ people mad. You would’ve steamrolled the poor fool in no time.”

Kyrie covered her hand with her mouth to stifle her giggling. “He’s not _entirely_ wrong…” she said quietly.

“Traitor,” Nero accused her.

Tess blinked and then directed a truly impressive kind of look at Dante; Nero was somewhat lost in admiration. He’d seen ‘are you shitting me’ looks before but never one this _expressively visceral._ “Do I _look_ pissed?” she said with a smirk. “Nero’s a perfectly nice guy to work with. I’m sorry to break it to you, Dante, but it’s _you.”_

“Thank you!” Nero blurted.

Dante seemed to stagger briefly in obviously feigned disbelief and hurt, then arched a quizzical eyebrow at Tess, then Nero, then back at Tess. “Whaaat? Everyone loves me,” he protested.

Nero’s loud bark of a laugh startled even him. “Bullshit!” he growled.

Tess nodded in agreement. “Indeed, because why else do I always get angry when _you_ start giving me shit?”

“I don’t give you shit, Twig,” Dante countered, smirking.

“Lies. You give _everyone_ shit!” she snapped back with a similar smirk. “And anyway, you took your sweet time showing your face. You’ve been tailing us from the start. You must’ve been bored out of your mind.”

“He’s been here from the start!?” Nero blurted. “And you knew it?!”

“Oh yeah, I’ve been sensing him since I set foot on the island,” Tess said with a shrug.

Dante grinned. “She’s got a hell of a radar.”

Tess rolled her eyes again. “Like it’s that hard. You’re just _a little_ better than Nero at keeping your head down but you hate doing that.”

Dante chuckled. “I thought I’d just be your backup in case anything went really south,” he offered then looked at Nero cheekily. “But y’know, I guess I was worried over nothing. Tess kicked your butt with a piece of rock salt.”

Nero responded with a strangled curse because Kyrie just snickered.

But Dante wasn’t done. He had a very amused smirk on his face, directed at Tess. “And I had fun watching _you_ flail and scream like a little girl with the spider demon.”

Tess grimaced and sounded an irritable little noise. “Oh my shit, you were there for that?”

He grinned wider, amused at her irritation. “Yeah, perched by a window. Saw the whole thing. ‘Don’t tell Dante’, my ass,” he said and smirked at Nero.

“Fuck off, old man,” Nero muttered.

“I did _not_ scream like a little girl” Tess protested sharply.

“Fine, you screamed like a big girl, Twig” Dante hooted.

She pushed off the balustrade of the bridge and gave him a shove. “Fuck off.”

The slayer just took a step back, chuckling lightly down at the witch. She glared up at him for a few moments then turned back to Nero and Kyrie with a knowing look. “Anyway, I think you guys will be fine now. Think about what I told you, Nero. But if anything crops up again, don’t bother with Dante, he’s _useless_ when it comes to the restless dead.”

“No, I’m not,” Dante protested sharply, suddenly all indignation.

“Yes, you are! Need I remind you what happened last month?” she fired back.

“That wasn’t my fault!” he snapped and brandished an accusing finger at her. “I had no idea that freakin’ warlock had cursed the place before he died, c’mon!”

She held up her hands in response. “It was 500 in damages! I had to pay that!”

He shrugged. “But the place was still standing, right?”

“More or less,” Tess scoffed. “In your case, _less.”_

Nero groaned _._ “Man, what are you guys? Married?” he muttered.

Tess and Dante’s gazes snapped right at him and he almost took a startled step backwards, they gave him such identical withering looks. “Shut up, kid,” they said, almost in unison and then awkwardly glared at each other for a bit before Tess gave Dante a push to start walking.

“Well! Since everything seems to be wrapped up, I’m gonna take this big idiot and leave before you two start any bullshit,” the witch muttered. “Come see me if you need any help with spooks.”

“Didn’t I tell you, kid? Expert Ghostbuster,” Dante chuckled, earning himself a swat on the arm as Tess ushered him off.

“Don’t call me that, you dipshit,” she muttered then looked over her shoulder and waved at them. “It was nice meeting you, Kyrie! I’ll come over later sometime and see you guys properly.”

“Travel safely!” Kyrie called back and waved too. “And thank you again!”

Nero just stared as the two of them went back to quibbling about details. Dante had reached out and tugged her arm into the crook of his elbow so she could lean into him.

“The client said nothing about delivering the place intact.”

“People don’t usually expect an extermination job to _annihilate_ two walls.”

“Well good thing they weren’t support walls, isn’t it?”

“I can’t believe you’re being such a child about this.”

“And I can’t believe you’re still salty about something that happened _last month_!” 

Kyrie pressed her forehead into Nero’s arm and when he looked down at her, her shoulders were shaking in quiet laughter. A lightbulb clicked on somewhere in his head and his jaw sagged.

“Wait. _Wait_. They’re not—“ he blurted.

“I think they are,” Kyrie giggled.

“But he’s an _idiot!!”_

“Well not really…”

“She could do better.”

“Credo used to mutter that about you too.”

“What?!”

Kyrie giggled and hugged him. He hugged her back and kissed her forehead.

“Do you think Credo can rest now?” she asked him.

Nero bit his lip briefly. He didn’t know if it was right to tell her what exactly he’d seen and what had happened. There was no need to give her anything else to anguish over. He wasn’t going to be lying, anyway.

“Yeah. We just gotta do one last thing,” he said and patted the sword by his side. “Let’s bury it somewhere quiet, away from this place. He’ll rest easy then. There’s… been too much death here already. There’s nothing good about this place.”

“You’re right,” Kyrie said and tucked her face in his chest. “Let’s go home, now,” she added. “And we’ll find somewhere peaceful to lay him to rest.”

“You were right too, about him and me,” he said quietly. “He… really worried about us both.”

“He doesn’t need to worry now,” she said and took his hand. “We’ll be fine. And do him proud.”

Nero smiled back at her awkwardly and let her lead him off the bridge and down the path to the city. He cast a last glance back at the castle, standing gloomy and forlorn against the darkening sky. He thought he saw glimpses of figures lingering on the parapets or on the very edges of the broken windows. Figures made of wispy light and frozen breaths.

There was nothing left for anyone in that castle, anymore; just a lot of loneliness and grief and regret.

So many lonely people.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I think you can tell this was meant to be a Halloween fanfic. I'm a failpanda though. But I hope you enjoyed it all the same!

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! If you're reading this as part of a completed work, I have something very important to tell you! 1. THANK YOU! 2. This is your mandatory rest stop. Drink some water, get up, stretch, then go to sleep and come back in the morning. It'll still be here ;)


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